


From Otabek, With Love

by BoxWineConfessions



Series: From Almaty, With Love [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Hair Braiding, M/M, Otabek POV, POV switch fic, gratuitous otabek shaving scenes, otabek talks to his plants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2018-11-21 08:49:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/pseuds/BoxWineConfessions
Summary: From Almaty, With Love revisited to focus predominantly on Otabek's point of view. New scenes are added, and others are reworked and refined.Otabek snaps his laptop shut, and turns to his nearest confidant, a rosemary plant spotted with small purple blossoms. “You know,” he says out loud. “There is a very fine line between anticipation and expectation. One is harmless, and expected. The other is quite dangerous.” Maybe, expectations for himself for the summer were acceptable. Show Yuri a good time. Make sure that his training was minimally affected. Be a good friend.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been nine days since Yuri agreed to come to Almaty, seven days since he confirmed his flight information, and twelve hours since he boarded his international flight out of Narita. There are an estimated ninety minutes until his flight touches down in Almaty.

Otabek snaps his laptop shut, and turns to his nearest confidant, a rosemary plant spotted with small purple blossoms. “You know,” he says out loud to an audience of none, or an audience of one, depending on how you assessed witnesses. “There is a very fine line between anticipation and expectation.”

He gives pause for a response despite knowing his conversation partner is a mute. “One is harmless, and expected. The other is quite dangerous," he says after some time.

Otabek showers, dries himself, and in quiet contemplation which clothes suggest excitement, and which suggest expectation. He opts for neither, and settles on unassuming at best. He selects a simple dark colored clothes, which always compliment riding.

Otabek presses the plastic indentation on the top of the cold metal can of Barbasol and gets far, far, far too much shaving cream for his efforts. He lathers it onto his face.

Yuri has suggested that he may stay for as much of the summer of possible. The mere suggestion is one of those strange and dream like things, abstract, yet somehow attainable. It’s like a gold medal, or a world championship, or a national title.

Are there not expectations set and met by himself for his own performances?

Otabek spreads the lather on his face, above his lip and then rinses his hand in the tap. He drags the blade of the razor against his face along with the grain. He watches as swaths of skin appear beneath the shaving cream.

Maybe, expectations for himself for the summer were acceptable. Show Yuri a good time. Make sure that his training was minimally affected. Be a good friend. Maybe this would be the best perspective to take. It would be wholly unfair to set expectations for Yuri, especially since it’s not in his nature to vocalize such things.

Satisfied with his own conclusion, Otabek washes his face off with lather. He dries himself, and he dresses. In the carport, the bike turns over on the first try. The wind, the noise, and the feeling of being whipped against the wind leaves little room to continue to well upon these kinds of things. The weight of expectation and anticipation is great.

Otabek parks, goes to baggage claim, and tries his hardest to stay out of the way. He checks the arrival board three times. He shifts back and forth on his feet. He checks his phone six times. He tries to sit down, but finds that he cannot sit still.

His phone chirps in his pocket. He whips it out to find a text from Yuri, “In taxi. See you soon.”

In twelve minutes, not that Otabek is counting or anything, Yuri totters out of the secured area in a messy bun, loose fitting Joggers, an oversized sweater, and a bewildered expression. Nothing about it suggests a dancer’s poise or grace. Nothing about it suggests the mettle of a  well worn international traveler.

His heat pounds in his chest confronted by the question, _what now?_

He closes the distance between them. Yuri’s grin is wide, despite the fact that he’s overburdened with carry on items. “Otabek!”

“Yuri.” Otabek extends his hand to Yuri. Simultaneously, Yuri leans in as if he anticipated more than a handshake. He awkwardly grabs Otabek’s forearm in an attempt to overcompensate. Otabek then tries to re-calibrate, and pulls Yuri in for a hug.

Otabek is tempted to mentally admonish himself for the strange and awkward display he just put Yuri through. Instead, he’s blindsided at Yuri being so close. In Pyeong Chang, they grew closer, no doubt. They’d sit on Yuri’s bunk at either end and watch YouTube videos on Yuri’s computer. They’d casually high five in the hall way, and bump fists after training. They didn’t hug.

Yuri smells like sweat, and coffee, and recycled air. His skin feels cool from being in the air-conditioning for the duration of an international flight. His hair is soft, and tickles his face.

“All of these are yours?” Otabek gestures to the numerous bags he’s brought with him.

“Who else’s would they be?”

“We’ll have to have a carrier send them to my place.”

“Bike?”

“Hm.” Otabek replies.  “When did this happen?” Otabek turns on his heel so that the crowns of their heads are touching. In boots, Otabek and Yuri are about the same height, which means in sock feet Yuri’s taller. It’s only been two or so months since they’ve seen each other.  “You’re taller now.” And then he follows it up with, “you’re surpassing me. Otabek had a feeling that this would happen. Still, it feels disorienting, alienating even, to meet a brand new Yuri every time they meet in person, especially when those meetings are only a few months apart. It’s only been since April that they’ve seen each other last.

Otabek takes the long way home from the airport. The weather is good, and Almaty is always beautiful. He takes the highway out by the city bypass so that Yuri can see the mountains. Then, he swings round so they can take the exit which goes down into the city center.

The feeling of Yuri’s body behind him on the bike is heavy and warm. It is familiar in a way that it hasn’t been whenever they’d gone riding at previous competitions. Yuri wraps his arms around him, and Otabek feels as if his skin glows underneath his jacket. Yuri shifts behind him, and he rests his cheek against Otabek’s back. Otabek wants to ride on, and on, and on, all the way up into the mountains in order to hold onto this moment for forever.

* * *

“You should’ve tied your hair back before,” Otabek tries not to wince as he talks. Yuri was doing awful things to his lovely hair. This included dragging the brush through and ripping at the ends.

Yuri’s hair has grown considerably in the time since they met in Barcelona. He must know how to care for it, even if his choreographer dressed it for him before competitions. It seems as if Yuri is being purposefully obstinate. He does that sometimes, when he’s tired, or he’s frustrated, or the weight of everything…expectations and anticipation, are too much for him.

“Stop. You’re just going to give yourself split ends.” Otabek holds out his hand, and in doing so, takes another tremendous risk. Up until now, their relationship didn’t include this kind of closeness.

Closeness.

Otabek dare not call it intimacy.

Yuri hands over the brush. Otabek sits down on his sofa with his legs spread apart. They could easily do this with both of them seated on the sofa. However, he has very vivid memories of mother fixing Farida’s hair in such a way. The fabric of her long flowing skirts would be pulled taut as she spread her legs. Farida would fidget until the knots were combed through. It was strange to see mother move and act so informally.

Yuri accepts the second invitation by sinking down against the sofa and onto the floor. Otabek’s feet rest just slightly underneath Yuri’s folded legs. It’s nice, having Yuri accept him so easily.

Otabek combs his hair from the very end of the strand to the root. The going is slow. Yuri’s hair is very tangle, and in some places matted. He doesn’t want to hurt Yuri, although he imagines that the other boy can’t have a tender head if his abrasive choreographer is the one braiding his hair.

He watches Yuri take in his surroundings. He scrutinizes the contents of his book shelf, the furniture, and each and every one of his plants.

Otabek becomes too engrossed in watching Yuri watch his surroundings. The brush catches, and Yuri cries out, “Ah!”

“Sorry,” Otabek responds.

“’s Okay,” Yuri responds softly.

Otabek breaks through most of the tangles. Yuri leans into his touch, and slumps against his legs. Otabek breaks his first, and his only rule. Anticipation versus expectation. He does not ask to card his fingers through Yuri’s hair. It’s just so fine, and so soft and so inviting. Yuri’s hair is soft. It smells of expensive shampoo, citrus and tea tree oil. He washed his own hair with it once or twice in Pyeong Chang when his travel bottle ran out, and he didn’t have the time to procure more.

Yuri doesn’t pull away. He almost purrs against Otabek’s touch by making contented little sighs, and turning his head so that his cheek rests against Otabek’s knee. He hates to end the moment, but Otabek has to be a good host.

“Tired?” When Otabek doesn’t get a response, he taps Yuri against the shoulder.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

* * *

Otabek lays in bed that night with his chest feeling tight, and his body feeling tight, and his mind feeling like it won’t relent into the early, early hours of the morning. He sprawls out into the middle of his expansive bed, and spreads his arms out wide. He doesn’t hit an edge on either side.

Otabek has never minded the size of his mattress. The fit is tight, alongside the rest of the furniture, but it serves its purpose. Now, he feels the same kind of knot-in-his-throat feeling that he gets whenever he’s out in open water on a boat or a ferry.

Otabek worries, about what they’ll do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. He wonders what expectations Yuri has for the visit. He wonders if those expectations are for Yuri himself, or if they extend to Otabek too.

* * *

Otabek wakes up just before six in the morning. He trudges out to the kitchen, measures out coffee, rests the spoon down, and then picks it up again remembering that Yuri is here, and Yuri may want some coffee before they go out.

Otabek turns on the kettle, and then promptly stomps back into his room, to retrieve a shirt.

Otabek pours himself coffee only to remember that he only has one mug. Damn. Yuri is allowed to expect that he’d have enough items for both of them to stay comfortably.

Moments later, Yuri stomps into the kitchen himself. Otabek’s mouth goes dry, but not in the way that happens if you drink too much coffee and are in need of proper hydration.  Yuri doesn’t look good in most clothes, most clothes look good on Yuri.

Maybe Yuri should be made aware of this. Wear them more often.

Yuri is little more than compact muscle and unblemished skin before him, save for the small trail of skin that’s covered by long blonde hair, and another small patch that is covered by white tiger striped briefs. Otabek purses his lips, and tries to steel furtive glances at his house guest.

Otabek tries to maintain normalcy. He spoons more peanut butter out, spreads it onto his rice cake, and then pops the rest of the peanut butter into his mouth.

Yuri moves about the kitchen, getting his own rice cakes and trying to find the jam in his refrigerator.

Otabek cannot help but let his eyes be drawn to the white tiger striped underwear that barely makes Yuri decent. Otabek can see the dimples on the small of his back and the few scant blonde hairs on his thighs. His ass is so round, and so plump looking beneath the stretched tight fabric. Otabek did not know that an athlete’s body could look that way, so soft and inviting.

So, of course, he wonders how it would feel.

No.

He doesn’t wonder how it would feel. That would generate an expectation. There’s no room here for excitement or anticipation, because his best friend does _not_ know that he’s simply standing here and staring at his body.

Yuri roots around the silverware drawer trying to find another spoon. “Where the hell is the other one?”

For fear of saying something embarrassing, such as, “you’re beautiful,” or “I’ve dreamed of this moment.”  Otebek makes a grunting noise and gestures to his coffee cup. The other spoon rests inside his unstirred coffee.

“Ugh,” Yuri responds.

Then, one of the more undesirable outcomes occurs. Yuri leans into him. He’s so close he can feel the heat from his nearly naked form. One misstep, and Yuri would be directly rubbing against very swollen, and increasingly difficult to manage bit of proof that Otabek cannot contain himself. Yuri plucks the spoon from Otabek’s mouth.

“You should put some pants on,” Otabek grunts, but only after Yuri’s back is turned to him, and he busies himself at the counter with his breakfast.

“Whatever.” Yuri plucks the coffee mug from his hand, takes a large gulp, and almost chokes.

That’s right. Yuri likes his coffee black. He prefers dark roasts most of all.

“This is disgusting,” he thrusts the cup back into Otabek’s hand and charges off to change into his workout clothes.

Otabek is glad to see him go. Really, really glad to see him go. He's not just glad to watch Yuri saunter down the hall way with long and gangly limbs. They sway in a way that suggets the rest of his body has not yet caught up. He is also very glad to see him go for other reasons. Otabek needs a moment to collect himself.

* * *

Otabek is used to being alone. He went to America alone, and he went to Canada alone, and there have been plenty of times, despite the fact that the house was filled with people, that he felt alone.

Otabek fears that Yuri is alone here. He’s gone from the friendly, almost familial relationship he seems to have with Victor Nikiforov, and Yuri Katsuki in Japan, and his rink mates in St. Petersburg. He’s gone from one within many, to one of few in Almaty.

In Amaty, so often Otabek is alone, or near alone. He moves through the city with his collar pulled high. He’s still recognized, even after Pyeongchang fades from every day headlines.

So badly he wanted to be alone.

Now, he loves having Yuri as an intrusion to all of that. He only hopes that, Yuri doesn’t feel stifled, or isolated here. Otabek could never bear it. Otabek could never bear it, for the simple fact that having Yuri around is distinctly different from having Farida stay for a weekend. Having Yuri here is different from wandering through his mother’s house like a lost soul, and feeling out of place in every single room. He and Yuri could go about their days within the confines of the apartment, never really speaking or doing anything meaningful together, and yet he relishes in it .

Otabek bought a new rosemary plant that afternoon. He doesn’t need it, but he wandered into the florists’ with the intent of buying fresh cut flowers. When he saw the small potted plants with bows wrapped around the terracotta, he could not bear to leave with cut flowers.

“Aisha is a dumb bitch,” Yuri says breaking the silence between them. The book he was reading falls onto his face as he talks, and he swears into the worn pages.

Yuri worms his way into his space, and claims it as his own immediately. Otabek doesn’t mind sitting on the carpet near the couch.

“Huh?” he says turning and locking eyes with Yuri like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on. “Dumb bitch?” Otabek snaps his well-worn copy of _Anna_ shut. He was just ending the first arc, and about to move onto the second, but he supposed that this warranted his attention. Otabek smooths the crinkled copy beneath his hands as he speaks.

“Isn’t she the one getting a Ph.D. in theoretical mathematics? And you’re the one playing catch up over the summer.”

“Whatever,” he snaps his math textbook closed too, and puts it on the table, on top of Otabek’s novel.

“It’s late.” Otabek notes as he glances at his phone. “Let’s stretch, and then get some kebab from the shop on the corner.”

Otabek is able to compartmentalize. Although seeing Yuri mostly naked over breakfast shakes him to his core, having Yuri help him stretch does not have the same effect. Otabek waits for Yuri to lay flat and extend his leg perpendicular to his torso. Otabek presses against his extended leg.

The human body is beautiful. The human body in the midst of training for competitive skating is often disgusting. It’s bruised, and blistered, and broken capillaries dot the skin. It’s sweaty, and it gets cramps in all the worst places. It loses weight when you’re trying to bulk up, and puts on fat when you’re trying to shed off season pounds. Every touch between himself and Yuri in this context is purposeful. Clinical.

“Otabek,”

“Hm?”

“How do you stretch when no one’s here?”

Otabek crosses his leg downward and extends it towards his arm. “I have Anton do it really well before I leave for home. Then I do it by myself if I need to stretch out again later.”

“Oh,” Yuri swallows thickly as if he knew the answer already.

Otabek switches to his other leg. Yuri is tense beneath his body in a way that he usually is not. Yuri bites his lip for a fraction of a second, before he catches Otabek’s gaze. In that moment, the clinical image is shattered. They’re nothing more than two vulnerable people staring at each other, touching each other. “Do you ever feel lonely?” Yuri asks as he rotates his leg, and releases it.

“Maybe.” He says after a long pause, “but difference between living alone, and feeling alone.” Otabek can’t describe what it feels like in words, but certainly Yuri, with all of his fame, knows it well. Otabek lets the words keep falling out of his mouth, because they’re true and because Yuri asked. “I’d rather be alone, or with one person than be around a lot of different people than be around people who are shallow and make me feel lonely.” He’s experienced all of these things. He likes being alone. Not lonely.

Now Yuri’s hands are upon him. He stretches Otabek’s legs, applying just enough pressure, and pushing backwards. Yuri’s expression is pained, like he knows he has the capacity to process everything that Otabek just said, but is not yet ready to do so.

They do not speak again until they’ve finished stretching, and they’re on the way home from the takeout place. Both of them carry large paper bags laden with all sorts of charred meats and side items. “You’re lonely?” Otabek asks.

“No!” Yuri answers a bit too quickly. “Not here anyway. Not here in Almaty.”

“You know fewer people here.” Otabek is desperate to make sure.

“Yea, but like it’s different. Like you said. It’s not the number of people right?” Yuri swallows thickly, it’s loud enough for Otabek to hear. “I have space to hear myself think here.”

Otabek understands, to an extent, that Yuri lives a very noisy, very lived in kind of life. There are people scattered across multiple countries and generations. There are fights, and there are cries of joy, and there is laughter, even if it’s interspersed between swearing and kicks to the back. It’s admirable, almost enviable. Otabek is the only male skater that consistently medals in international events. Women’s and pairs, isn’t any better, with their skaters in other divisions struggling. Otabek wonders why he is special. “You’re used to the noise.” It's not a question. 

Otabek unlocks the door, holds it open, and waits for him to step inside.

Yuri speaks again only after they've both crossed the threshold, "Yeah but, I think I like the quiet too.”


	2. Chapter 2

“This morning they were day glow,” Otabek jams the keyboard on his phone, and prays that autocorrect comes to his rescue while he brushes his teeth. He hits send, spits, and rinses. He double texts, “Cheetah print.”

He’s only a few strokes into combing his hair when Kamilya responds, “WOW! I bet you loved that.”

“It’s less than ideal,” he responds. Otabek opens his jar of hair gel, and smooths a dollop into his hair. It’s getting long in the back. He’ll need a trim soon.

“Have you tried telling him? Like a normal person would?” He watches the gray dots crawl across his screen that signify that his friend is about to drag him within an inch of his very life. “Or is that too simple? Too emotionally competent?” She keeps going. “Just bring him around. We’ll tell him.” Otabek turns the screen off and pockets the phone. They’ll do no such thing. Every time Vera and Kamillya have tried to facilitate  _anything_  for him, it’s ended disastrously. This includes sending drinks to men on his behalf, stealing his phone, installing a dating app, and swiping for him, and other unforgivable acts.

* * *

 

They spend the afternoon showing each other their routines. Yuri’s short program is breathtaking, and takes advantage of his signature moves. However, Yuri stumbles over transitions in a way that he hasn’t in the past. Otabek assumes that it is due to Yuri’s growing body.

“I guess you want to see mine now?” Yuri is complaining about not connecting with the music or the theme. Otabek cannot empathize, because he does not see it.  Regardless of the fact that the transitions are rough, and Yuri steps out of almost every jump, it remains just as breathtaking as every other routine that Otabek has seen him perform. Yuri doesn’t just learn choreography, he takes it and molds it like clay. Otabek wonders how Yuri will do that with this piece. There’s infinite potential buried within those steps, and Yuri will reinvent them time and time again by the end of season. 

“Yeah, as a matter of fact,” Yuri says as he exhales sharply from his nose.

Otabek drifts to the middle of the rink. Although there is no music from the sound system, he can clearly hear the soft violin, and the notes of the flute that embrace the vocals softly. Kamilya teased him about the choice of his song when she heard it.

 _Caro_   _Nome,_ Dearest Name.

Who made my heart throb for the first time…

Otabek’s heart  _stops_ beating as he goes in from a counter into the Quad Sal. In a blur of white, and gray, he sees a pulse of purple. Yuri’s pullover. Otabek has had a  _surprisingly_ good grasp on the choreography despite the fact that it’s only June. He’s executed the short program elegantly in the weeks prior.

Now, he can feel Yuri’s scrutinous gaze across the rink. He’s put wholly on display, not just the routine’s difficulty or presentation, but the very essence of his being. His transition into the step sequence is awkward, and in that moment he becomes little more than the rigid and stagnant performer that abandoned dance years ago. He feels like an ice sculpture that has sat out at a party for hours, once beautiful, but now all the edge and all the detail is gone. Although Yuri inspires him best, he also strips away the confidence that he works so hard to cultivate every time the other boy is near.

No matter what the medal sequencing is, Yuri reduces Otabek to the thirteen year old boy in ballet class every time he watches him perform. 

Yuri makes this clear upon the routine’s end. “It’s good, but you always do Sals. If you keep that up, no one will care. Surprise me.”

“What’s the music?”

“Caro Nome.”

Yuri scoffs. “You’re really into the sappy shit.”

Otabek responds in kind, “It’s a grand piece.” It speaks to his desire to do better. To keep up, with Yuri and Jean Jaques Leroy, and all of the rest. Otabek isn’t a particularly expressive person.  When he cannot speak his feelings, he conveys them through action. When he cannot convey them through direct action, he skates. Otabek will surprise the world with his expressiveness. He will surprise the world with his love.

Should Yuri not understand this? He sees the way that Yuri kicks lockers, and people. He hears the way that he yells into his phone, and mumbles obscenities underneath his breath. He refuses to believe that Yuri, a person brimming with emotion, does not express himself through his routines.

Which can mean only one thing, Yuri is blocking him out.

It happens from time to time. He threatened to end their friendship the night before the exhibition skate in Barcelona. He didn’t return his calls for a week after the medal ceremony in Peyongchang. It’s these surface level threats that make Otabek do strange and dangerous things.

They make him tear off on a bike in Barcelona. They make him re-choreograph an entire exhibition skate in one night. They make him skate up to Yuri and ask him, “want to be surprised?” Although he may only have two quads in his routine, but he can and he will go to the ends of the earth to surprise Yuri Plisetsky.

Yuri yelps in response. Otabek had skated up behind him, and they hadn’t spoken for the better part of a half hour. Much to his surprise, Yuri doesn’t say yes right away. He arches a single brow instead. He’s not used to skepticism from Yuri.

“Fuck yeah,” he responds finally.

Otabek starts breathing properly again when Yuri finally responds.

“Ever do a death spiral?” Otabek softens his voice to keep it from cracking. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest, he can feel the blood rush to his ears. Being around Yuri always seems to set in motion a deeply tumultuous dialogue, “do this, it will impress Yuri.” Followed instantly by, “don’t do this, it’s quite dangerous, or stupid, or both.”

But…

 Yuri’s smile is something that appears out of thin air. It materializes from scowls, it’s tagged onto the end of big, slack jawed looks of awe. Otabek chases it relentlessly, and when he gets it, he feels like he still owes Yuri something for the pleasure of seeing it.

So Otabek will inevitably do the very dangerous move that he hasn’t done in years.

“No,” Yuri scoffs. “That’s for pairs.”

Otabek can see the thin crimson veil of a blush creep across Yuri’s face. Yuri breaks his gaze and digs his pick into the ice, refusing to meet his gaze. “You want me to be the girl?” Yuri inflates the statement with false bravado. His voice starts off gruff, and then loses its gravelly tone. It’ melts away and all that is left that is the sound of someone who is interested, but afraid.

“I want,” he says his voice growing impatient. It’s very like Yuri to push him forward, and then test his patience. “To show you something new.” He quickly adds, “It doesn’t have to be regulation or anything. You don’t have to go down low. Just a spin.”

Yuri nods. “Yeah, fine. Whatever. Impress me.”

Otabek swallows the lump in his throat and extends his hand.

Yuri accepts.

“Trust me.”

“That’s been my problem from the start.”

If Otabek feels that Yuri pushes him to be wild and uncontained, and Yuri feels that Otabek pushes him to be reckless and irresponsible, what implications does that have for how they really feel, and how they really wish to be when they are together?

They skate the length of the rink hand in hand, and Otabek appreciates the weight of Yuri’s hand in his own. They’re both wearing thin gloves, but the curve of Yuri’s hand against his own feels good. Otabek wills himself to speak when they double back. He doubts that Yuri would be okay with calling the whole thing off and simply skating hand in hand. “We’re going to do a diagonal with a bracket,” He instructs firmly. “Then, just….lean backwards as soon as we’re out of the bracket. Hold your body rigid. Like a jump.”

It takes multiple attempts. Yuri’s lean into his body is uneasy. He’s uncomfortable, and his body isn’t used to bending in that way while moving on the ice.

“Almost. One more time.”

“This is a lot of fucking hassle.”

“It’s fun,” which is kind of a lie. It’s terrifying, like driving too fast down a steep hill, or popping a wheelie, or street racing. The adrenaline when it’s all said and done makes you believe that it was fun.

“Like you would know.”

Otabek can remember getting hit in the face by Kami’s purple scarf during the initial spin and drop time after time after time. He can remember something going wrong, and holding onto Kami so tightly that he sprained his wrist. He can remember dropping her, and she had to take two days off because of the bruising. He does know, but Yuri isn’t aware of his past experiences in pairs.

“I do. My old coach spun me every day. Over and over for weeks until I understood what I was doing before he trusted me with Kamilya. “

 

Very few people did. It existed like a season long fever dream in his career that he was uncertain that anyone remembered except for himself and Kami.  “This time,” Otabek instructs.

He says a small and silent prayer. Don’t drop Yuri. At the expense of all other things, do not drop Yuri. He tenses his own body. Yuri’s body yields, as if he’s been doing this for years now. They get in one rotation, two, and Yuri’s grip on his arm is vice tight. He can feel his own skin bruising. Four rotations, and Yuri still has momentum.

“Fuck,” Otabek can feel the pushback of Yuri’s pick digging into the ice. It makes him step forward, but Yuri’s still mid spin. It makes him pull in the opposite direction, and before he can fully understand what’s going on, he’s scrambling to try and break Yuri’s fall.

“Ooof,” Otabek managed to position them so that he broke the fall.

“God that was dumb,” Yuri growls. Much like his growl melts away scowls, his laughter melts away anger in his voice. It sounds so light, and so mirthful in comparison to his usual gruff exterior. It compels Otabek to do the same. Laugh, deep and from the belly. So hard that he cannot remember the last time he laughed so deeply.

If this were a novel, this would be the end of the first act. He’d ask Yuri to kiss him, and they’d have some sort of misunderstanding or miscommunication that kept them from being together until the third act.

In real life, they’re in some kind of liminal space. They could be in the prologue, or the middle, or maybe even the epilogue.

Otabek gets up from the ice, and offers Yuri his hand.

Yuri accepts and when he gets up, they’re only inches apart from one another.

“You did pairs?”

“One season, in juniors.” Otabek would very much like to introduce him to Kami. However, if the texts they’ve exchanged throughout the day are any indicator, Kami isn’t to be trusted. She sent him a poorly edited photo this afternoon. His photo from the ISU website, with a fedora poorly edited on top and a word bubble, “M’Lady.” For a moment, he considered throwing his phone as Yuri often did.

Otabek goes onto explain, “I quit after one season because I didn’t feel free. That’s all I ever wanted from skating.”

Yuri looks confused when he mentions freedom. Perhaps that is the problem. Yuri has difficulty with expression, not because he is overwhelmed by emotion, but because he’s scrutinized, and watched, and willed toward perfection with a forced precision, unlike Otabek who simply meanders toward it through hard work and immense sacrifice.

* * *

“Do you mind Plisetsky? Otabek closes the medicine cabinet door and wipes the fog off the mirror so that he’s looking right in the mirror, and at Yuri. Yuri is shirtless, as usual. He’s got a towel wrapped around his middle.

Yuri’s skin is flushed pink from the heat of the shower: the muscles of his chest, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, all a beautiful shade of rose. His hair is damp and clings to his face and his neck. It’s matted thoroughly.

It makes Otabek feel as if all the air has left the room.

 “Not at all,” Yuri responds. “I told you I was done with the shower. I just didn’t say I was done with the sink.” Yuri tugs at the towel at his waist. “I have to moisturize,” he growls. Sometimes Yuri speaks as if Otabek should already know these things. He should know that moisturizing is important, and he should do ballet, and he should know how long to let yeast rise in dough before punching it back down into the bowl and kneading it smooth.

“One minute,” Otabek’s face is covered in shaving cream. He likes to do it right out of the shower when his stubble is still soft. He swipes the razor in long delicate strokes, and then goes after stubborn patches with quick flicks of the wrist.

There are times when Otabek wishes that he were more like Yuri. Less visible body hair, and where they was hair, it was downy soft. Otabek has to shave every day, or every other day.

Otabek can feel Yuri’s gaze upon him. The base of his spine tingles. Their eyes meet in the mirror. Yuri’s gaze reveals no one singular emotion. Just intensity. Otabek wipes his face down with a warm wet rag. Then he dries his face, and hangs the fluffy white towel off of his bare shoulder. Finally, he meets Yuri’s gaze in the mirror once more. He looks to his own uncombed hair. His undercut is getting too long.

It’s clear, from the rink the other afternoon, that Yuri trusted Otabek. Yuri him spin him around with minimal resistance. The question is, how much does Otabek trust Yuri? Yuri extends his haphazard, but meticulous attention to domains outside of the ice. He cooks complex dishes after all. “When you’re finished out here, come to the balcony. I need a favor.” He trusts Yuri so much as to allow him to cut his hair.

Which is to say, he trusts him quite a great deal.

Otabek brings the clippers with him. He lays out the three piece suit he wants to wear, and pulls out several ties. He would like to match with Yuri, if possible.

Then, he goes out to the balcony.

Almaty in twilight is his favorite. The bustling, but clean daytime Almaty melts away to the darker and stranger Almaty of night. In between, men push their kebab carts back home. Mother’s usher children inside. People of night time Almaty slink around in the shadows waiting for the liminal time to end: night shift workers, and tired cab drivers, and girls dressed to the nines waiting for the sleekest of cocktail lounges to open.

“What’s this about?” Yuri gingerly steps over the sage plant he’s used to prop open the door.

“Trim my hair?”

Yuri is visibly made uneasy by the request. Otabek understands. It’s a large responsibility to be tasked with. He feels similarly when he cards his hands through Yuri’s fine locks and braids it up.

”Shouldn’t you go to the barber for that or something?”

“Just the undercut.” He says as he thrusts the clippers into his hands. “No need to see someone for that.”

“If I give you a bald patch, I’m not responsible.”

The buzz of the clippers is low, constant, and soothing. The edge of the trimmer buzzes against his scalp. The clipper housing vibrates against his skin and tickles lightly. It feels good against the skin at the base of the neck. With each movement of Yuri’s hand, he can feel the tension slip away from his body.

A haircut wasn’t supposed to feel so good. It wasn’t supposed to feel like anything at all. But Yuri held a power over him that he could not shake no matter how hard he tried. Yuri’s presence made him feel new thing during mundane experiences, made the ordinary extraordinary. He feels guilty, extracting this much pleasure from such a simple act.

It’s different than when Otabek runs his fingers through Yuri’s hair. That is supposed to feel good.

Then, Yuri does something that takes his breath away. He runs a single digit down Otabek’s earlobe, down the crest of his hairline, and the nape of his neck. The touch is far more personal and far more intimate than anything they’ve done before.

The way that Yuri’s fingertip glides against his skin and scratches lightly ignites multiple senses. It makes him hold his eyes closed and focused on the sensation, and no other external stimuli. It’s intimate. No one has ever touched Otabek with such softness and tenderness.

Does Yuri understand this? That despite his gruff exterior, and despite the constant stream of swearing and kicking, that he is a soft and vulnerable human, and that’s nothing to be afraid of?

The blades move closer to his ears. It drags Otabek back to reality, “Careful around the ears,” he warns. “Tickles when you get close.”

“Oh,” Yuri rests his free hand against Otabek’s shoulder. “I need to get close to there though. Or it’ll look stupid and uneven. “He presses against the shell of Otabek’s ear and moves it away from his head. “Does that tickle?”

“Not so much,” Otabek decides.  “This is going to suck isn’t it?”

He doesn’t know Yuri’s choreographer personally. She seems hard around the edges, cold even, but not uncaring in the way that only a strong, but detached woman can be. Otabek doesn’t so much worry about Lillia’s presence so much as he worries about maintaining face long enough to make a good impression. He worries about the other dinner guests. He worries that he’ll be forced into the position that Yuri often forces him into when he is uncomfortable. If Yuri is brash to the point of being rude, then Otabek will feel as if he must apologize and repair on Yuri’s behalf.

“Yes,” Yuri responds finally. “But last time I did this with Lila in Paris it introduced me to someone who knew someone else. Got an endorsement deal. Hag knows people. It sucks, but it can be useful.”

Yuri combs the longer hair on the crown of Otabek’s head backwards. The fast movements mean that Otabek barely has time to appreciate the drag of neatly clipped nails against his scalp, but the motion sends electric shocks down his spine nonetheless.

Then, Yuri’s finger tips drift lazily from his head, to his neck, and then to the juncture of Otabek’s neck and shoulder. Yuri presses into the skin there, and rubs in a slow circle.

Otabek melts at the touch. Yuri undoes years of tension and anxiety in a single motion. Otabek’s voice betrays him, as he lets out a small gasp.

It doesn’t deter Yuri, whose fingers continue to press into the skin. He works one shoulder, and then the other. The sun slowly sinks down behind the buildings and the trees. The Almaty of night comes to pay them a visit.

She does not seem to mind the closeness between them. Instead, she invites herself in, slinks onto the balcony, and envelops them both in dark navy. Otabek, his mind foggy and drunk on Yuri’s touch absent mindedly grabs Yuri’s hands. Their fingers are threaded together.

Yuri doesn’t pull away.

“Your shirt needs ironing,’ he says after a long pause that could’ve gone on for hours. He can feel Yuri’s pulse racing through his unbuttoned shirtsleeve. “I have an iron and a board. It’s in the linen closet.”

Yuri scoffs and pulls his hand away; the moment is broken.

* * *

Dinner is somehow worse than Otabek imagined. Lilia’s arrival in Almaty is being celebrated  by a number of high society of women with whom she’s well acquainted with here, including her cousin Maria. Otabek is seated on the right hand side of the hostess, Lilia, who sits at the head of the table. Yuri sits on the left hand side opposite him. The table cloth is crisp and white like untouched snow. The candlesticks are silver.

Of the twelve people at the dinner party, they are the only men. They’re the youngest people here by  _at least_  thirty years. Minimum. Otabek swears that he can taste the thick and musty odor of fur in the air. Although it’s June, most of the women have foxes, and minks wrapped around their shoulders.

Of course, several of the women here know him. There’s the MP’s wife, who notes that she hasn’t seen him since before he left for America. There’s the Ambassador, who he met right after he took bronze in Pyeongchang. There’s his mother’s friend Anna, who is a socialite and gossip. Surely, mother will hear of their meeting by the end of the night.

It’s not  _that_  specifically that makes his skin crawl.

The dining room is unfathomably hot. Otabek says that as a person who is vehemently against the use of air conditioning.

The amuse bouche is a small helping of steak tartare on a crostini. Simply looking at the uncooked meat makes him want to loosen his tie and excuse himself for the rest of the night. Of course, Otabek has been in this situation before. Raw oysters when he met with the Prime Minister. Otabek knows theoretically that he can do it. He takes a large gulp of red wine, and then another, but leaves a decent amount to wash down the taste when he’s finished. He looks at his plate. It’s barely a morsel.

Long fingers creep onto his plate and snatch the tartare. Yuri shovels it into his mouth as if it were a potato chip.

“Yuri!” Lilia scolds. Her stare is cold, calculated, and murderous.

Otabek fears for his life, but he’s so grateful for Yuri.

Yuri smacks loudly, as if he’d been on the cusp of saying something, but then saw Lilia’s disgusted expression. He swallows, coughs, and then speaks. “He hates raw stuff Lilia, I was doing him a favor.”

“Grabbing food off of another’s plate  _across_  the table,” Lillia rolls her brows first raising one, and then lowering it only to raise the other and tilting her head in his direction. “Is quite rude.”

“I apologize ma’am,” although Otabek isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for other than the fact that he and Yuri trade guilt by association back and forth freely.

The conversation at dinner inevitably turns to the Olympics, which makes Otabek drink his second glass of wine. “Oh, but we loved your performance.”

“Captivating.”

“Yes, captivating really.”

Their voices fade in and out. Otabek closes his eyes, and tries to shake the feeling of raw, and unrelenting anxiety that tears through flesh and bone and gnaws on him from the inside out.

“Hey,” Yuri interjects. “I did medal more than him, singles and team too!”

Although Otabek is unsure if Yuri is simply deflecting, or legitimately wishes to speak about his performance, he is grateful for Yuri in that moment. Otabek did his best. It wasn’t that he had issues with his performance, or his ranking. He had issues with the aftermath. He represented his country, nothing more.

At the very least, the desert is good, crème Brule.

* * *

“Yuri,” Otabek claps a hand over Yuri’s shoulder on their way out the door.

Yuri yelps in surprise in response, perhaps believing it’s Lilia reaching out to peel his skin away and eat him alive.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

“What’s up?” Yuri says as he tugs his tie away from his neck.

“Uhm,” Otabek closes his fist around the keys in his pocket, and then releases them. “I think I’ve had too much to drink.”

The evening air is humid, thick in the warm evening air. There is light from the streetlamps that dot the city block, there’s light from the moon. It hits the pavement and the side of the street just enough to see a partial image, but nothing completely.

Moths fly into the bulbs of streetlamps. Crickets chirp in the distance. The air hangs thick and tangible between himself and Yuri. There’s an implicit question there, “can he drive?” It’s an awful position to put Yuri in. He’s only driven the bike a few times.

Yuri is immediately up in his space, “gimme” he reaches for the keys.

“Let me start it.”

“No way. I can fucking do it.” Yuri straddles the bike, throws his weight into it, and almost knocks it over.

Otabek cards his fingers through his hair in frustration. He should call a cab. Now. Except Yuri’s biting his lip, and looking at him with big pouty eyes. So Otabek straddles the bike, throws his own weight into it, knows that he has to lean and twist  _just_  so. Then, he slides back, allowing Yuri to take the driver’s seat.

“Plisetsky,” Otabek wraps his arms around Yuri’s middle, and breathes hotly into his ear. “I have faith in you.”

Yuri hops on, and tears down the quiet mid-town boulevard like they’re on the run. It  _feels_  like they’re on the run, desperate to get away from Lilia and her friends. It makes Otabek  _almost,_ revoke his trust entirely. Yuri’s hands twist at the break, his feet glide outward to prop the bike up at a light, willing it to stop. Otabek’s hands remain tight around Yuri’s waist, but he dare not tell Yuri to slow down. The speed justifies his rapidly beating heart, and the thin layer of sweat that covers him beneath his suit.

At the light, there’s another biker waiting for green. It’s a small Suzuki, which is overburdened by to small figures on the bike.

They rev their engines at Yuri.

Yuri cocks his head back at him slightly. Otabek feels himself nodding yes in permission without considering the consequence.  Yuri responds with a wordless, “yes.” He revs the engine back, and stares daggers at the driver, who wears a fully enclosed helmet.

Yuri watches the opposite light, waiting for yellow. He jams the accelerator before their light turns green, and the bike makes a strange heaving knock sound. Instead of flooding the engine outright, they tear away from the intersection leaving the other riders in the dust.


	3. Chapter 3

Otabek is used to walking into the kitchen to find Yuri barely covered at the counter. He’s used to neon, animal print, and Calvin Klein hugging Yuri’s narrow hips and stretched across his smooth buttocks. 

He’d like to believe that he’d gotten it out of his system through frantic texts to Kamilya. Although this method was flawed, because after a few of these messages, she started asking questions like, “is he packing?”

To which Otabek had no choice but to investigate further, and respond, “yes.” 

Which led to, “Just make a fucking move already Altin.” Which made him feel like pitching his phone as Yuri often did. Otabek isn’t waiting for a confession, but he’s waiting for a sign. To which Kami tells him that he’s dense. That if showing up to breakfast half naked, and intimate haircuts turned into shoulder rubs aren’t enough of a sign, what is? 

Maybe she’s correct. 

Otabek finds other ways to mitigate any embarrassing situations over breakfast. Whether he feels aroused or not upon waking, he takes himself into his hand, and works his palm over his cock until he’s hard, and in no time at all he’s cuming into his palm. It feels cold, clinical, and joyless, but whenever his mind wanders to Yuri and his candy colored underwear, he always feels like a man guilty of some petty crime afterward. 

Otabek is used to walking into the kitchen to find Yuri in underwear which leaves little to the imagination. What he doesn’t expect, is to see Yuri shirtless and wearing track pants that are at least one size too large. They are an intimately familiar teal color which is used in most of his official warm up gear. His eyes drift leisurely, unapologetically, down Yuri’s frame. Yuri has gained a bit of muscle mass, but his frame is still slight. Scant whorls of blonde hair dapple his chest. 

The pants hang low on Yuri’s frame, revealing the hard angles of his hips and a hot pink waistband. His eyes drift lower, and Otabek can see the inviting downward v to his crotch. 

Of course, all of this is framed by Otabek’s warm up pants, the ones that he wore every day in Pyeongchang. The ones that say “Kazhakstan” down the leg in big gold letters. It’s strange and amazing how a single garment can take all of the air out of the room. It makes his mouth dry, and makes his cock stir in a way that the sight of Yuri in little more than a small pair of underwear ever could. 

Otabek drifts across the carpet and onto the linoleum of the kitchen. It feels as if something else is controlling his feet as he moves. 

“Problem Altin?” Yuri turns to him, and furrows his brow. “I’m wearing fucking pants” 

He must’ve given them to Yuri, on his first night here when he needed pajamas, or they got mixed in with Yuri’s laundry. They’ve been throwing everything into Otabek’s large laundry bag and dropping them off at the cleaners together. 

Otabek considers for a moment, what he should do versus what he would like to do. He’d very much like to splay his hand across the small of Yuri’s back, and touch the soft patch of skin just above the waistband of his pants. He’d like to squeeze Yuri’s muscular flesh underneath the blended fabric. 

Too direct. 

But the image of Yuri makes something click in his mind. Make him think, possibly for the first time that Yuri might have something like feelings for him. Makes him wonder if he could make Yuri’s mouth go dry, make Yuri want. 

Otabek continues to step into Yuri’s space. He rocks up onto the balls of his feet, bridging the gap in height between them. He’s so close to Yuri that he can feel his breath. He can see his pupils narrow in surprise. 

Yuri’s lips purse for a fraction of a second, and in that instant, he knows. 

Otabek reaches behind Yuri, and in a single flip of the wrist opens the cabinet to grab for his coffee mug. He leans back onto his heels, then goes flat footed. He pours himself a cup of coffee, deescalating the situation just as quickly as it began.

“Not yours.” 

* * *

“This is really uncomfortable.” Yuri fidgets on the back of the bike. They’ve overburdened the bike with two bodies, their skates, and a small bag filled with winter clothing. “It’s not a long ride is it?” 

“An hour?” 

“Otabek, what the fuck?” Yuri fidgets more, making it difficult for Otabek to get a clean start. 

“It’s worth it. Trust me” 

Yuri’s protests cease. It’s one of the many things that he appreciates about Yuri. He asks for trust, and Yuri gives it freely. 

Otabek stops at the 1000 meter marker up the mountain. There’s a small car park, and a place to buy food, and a place to take photos of the city below. 

Yuri huffs into his shoulder, “why are we stopping?” 

“You’ll get altitude sickness if we don’t stop Yuri.” 

“Oh,” Yuri clambers off of the bike. “Awful lot of trouble for something we do every single day, right?” 

“Maybe,” Otabek responds. “But when was the last time you skated at an outdoor rink?” 

Yuri bites his lip and looks towards the puffy white clouds in the sky for answers to Otabek’s question.  He looks to the left, and then to the right, mentally cataloguing the last few years. 

It’s undeniably cute. 

“A long ass time,” Yuri decides finally. “I think I still lived in Moscow. Grandpa would take me there in the winter on days I didn’t have lesson,” Yuri adds. “It fucking sucked, the ice was never treated, and it was always really crowded.” 

Yuri makes them buy big overpriced bag of Rhakat chocolates. He eats them voraciously, but shakes the bag in Otabek’s direction in offering several times.  Otabek accepts, and lets the chocolate melt on his tongue slowly. 

They arrive at Meddu mid-morning. The mountain air is crisp against his tongue and sharp in his nose. It’s strange how living in the city mutes certain features, while the mountains bring out others. In the off season, Meddu is quiet, mostly limited to young skaters who hope to go pro, and athletes who want to train in a high altitude environment. In the past, he and Anton have stayed in a cabin nearby. He’s taken the time to get used to performing his routine in the thin air, and then he’ll get off to a competition. Everything feels so much easier after that. Like he’s flying across the ice, and his body doesn’t have time to protest. 

Maybe Anton and Lilia will let them do that sometime this summer, let them rent a cabin and stay for awhile. Of course, if done under the guise of training it may mean they’d want to come along. And, the strange, slow awkward dance that he’s doing with Yuri is already on display for hours upon hours each day at the rink and in the gym.  

Yuri clambers off the bike. His chest heaves as he moves. It’s been awhile since he’s been up he mountains, and he’s unaccustomed to the thin mountain air.  It means that Otabek will have to watch Yuri when they’re on the ice, and make sure that he doesn’t overexert himself. 

“How you feel?” Otabek asks. He’s certain that Yuri wouldn’t say anything if he were experiencing altitude sickness, especially since he seemed offended that they stopped midway up the mountain. 

“Like an old fucking man about to hack up a lung. The air is so fucking thin.” 

“How does your head feel?”

“Fine,” Yuri says. 

“You’ll get used to the air. Just take it easy at first.” 

“Right,” Yuri huffs.  “Why are we doing this again?” 

Otabek unstraps the boxes which contain their skates off of the rear fender of the bike. Yuri moves to grab his own, but Otabek keeps his grip firm on the cases. If Yuri is having difficulty now, he didn’t need additional stressors. “Enjoy the scenery. Do something that Almaty is known for.” 

“You said this wasn’t touristy!” 

“It’s not,” Otabek responds. 

They put on their skates in relative silence. They move in tandem as they often do in the rink. Near one another, but not quite side by side. It’s Yuri that breaks the silence finally, “So did you come here a lot as a kid?” 

Otabek’s experiences are not like Yuri’s. All of his memories of Meddu revolve around ice shows, with tickets ranging from a few hundred Tenge to well into the thousands. Elite training camps with the national team coupled with perfectly treated ice. He doesn’t associate outdoor rinks with crowds, or bad ice, or dull skates, like when he was a novice. Instead, Meddu, in all her glory represents the moments when Otabek’s career began to take off and soar. “Not especially,” he says. 

His eyes drift upward toward the cloudless crisp blue sky. It’s strange, in the metal and glass cage of the indoor rink he feels free to fly high. In the crisp mountain air where the very sky is the limit he feels grounded. “When my mom said that we were moving home…To Almaty from…I guess It was Paris, I wasn’t happy. Then, she showed me photos of this place in books and on travel brochures. I felt better about it then,” Otabek smiles over his shoulder at Yuri. 

Yuri skates faster to catch up to him completely. Otabek drags his blade to slow down. “She didn’t fucking take you did she?” 

“Ah,” Otabek admits. “It took awhile. She was quite busy. ” 

“I don’t like that,” Yuri huffs. “When people say they’re going to do something, and then they don’t do it.” 

“We did go,” Otabek notes. “It just took some time.” 

They tug on their skates and hit the ice. Yuri’s flow is seamless and graceful. Upon first glance it appears that he is wholly unaffected by the change in altitude. He loops round in a compulsory, and does a laying back Ina Bauer. Otabek himself restrains himself to the slow simple moves that he uses during warm up until he knows for certain that his body has acclimated. 

Yuri on the other hand, transfers over quickly to his full blast, no holds barred method of skating. He busts round the loop, and launches into a jump. He gets  _ lots _ of air, but not enough rotations. Time seems to slow down as Otabek watches him pop the axel. 

Yuri does everything just right to protect his body. He rolls with the fall, and the impact is minimal. His cry of, “What the fuck!?” causes heads across the rink to turn, and Otabek skates over to meet him. 

He offers Yuri his hand, and helps him. 

“What the fuck was that?” Yuri’s tone is incredulous. 

“Told you to take it easy.” 

“Just an axel Otabek. Do you know how long it’s been since I popped a normal axel? Like I think I was a kid.” 

“Stop acting as if this is rink time for training,” Otabek supplies. It isn’t. 

Otabek’s chest feels tight. Their hands are still linked together, despite the fact that he picked Yuri up off of the ice. Although it feels as if they’ve been holding hands for forever, it cannot be more than a few seconds, and he’s grateful that Yuri pulled on thin cotton gloves before they got onto the ice. He’s certain that his palm is damp with sweat right now. 

“I don’t understand.” 

“Fun?” 

“That’s fuckin rich coming from you Otabek.” Yuri clenches his jaw and furrows his brow in concentration. “Always so fucking serious.” Yuri’s mouth curls into a smile as he mocks him. “My name is Otabek, ice is a battle. Fuck ballet,” Then Yuri’s tone is broken and he’s giggling. 

Otabek can do nothing other than take the insults in stride. He supposes that it is a stretch. He himself has chosen to spend many a free day or afternoon at the rink. However, he can’t remember he simply existed on the ice for the sake of doing so intrinsically.  “Fair point.” 

Alright then,” Yuri drops his hand, and shifts onto the ice so that they are side by side. “Let’s do compulsories or whatever the fuck.” Their skates glide against the ice in tandem  _ shunk shunk _ , and Otabek can feel the weight of Yuri’s hand on his shoulder. Yuri balls his fist around the strap on the shoulder of his black peacoat. “Show the fuck down. I still feel like I’m dying.” 

* * *

When Yuri and Otabek show up at Kamilya’s high rise apartment, she makes the loudest and most undignified screeching noise that Otabek has ever heard. Her face is flushed red, indicating that she’s already had something to drink. Immediately she leans into Yuri’s space, places a hand around his shoulders in overeager familiarity and asks, “so you’re Yuri?” Her eyes are wide, and her grin is toothy. 

Yuri pulls back from her, and brushes against Otabek’s chest. Otabek looks at her with the same kind of fire and anger that he’s been looking at her with for years now. 

Of course, she ignores him in the same way that she’s been doing for years now. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’m so glad you’re here!” She yells over the noise of the party. An athlete’s apartment shouldn’t be filled with the strong smoky scent of incense and shisha, but he bites his tongue. He thrusts his hand outward, and offers her a six pack of Derbis beer over Yuri’s shoulder. No matter how much alcohol she already has, he feels as if he should be grateful. He had to ask his neighbor to pick it up for him when he and Yuri inevitably got carded at the corner store. 

Kami begrudgingly lets go of Yuri and accepts the drinks. He can feel the tension thick between them like the smoke in the apartment. Then, it lifts as soon as they leave the foyer and walk toward the kitchen. Yuri’s eyes go wide, and immediately he crouches to the floor. In the center of the kitchenette is Kamilya’s cat, a white and brown cat named  _ Stumpy, _ and the absolute bane of his time spent with Kamilya. 

He’s splayed on his back, and Yuri immediately grabs his stomach. The cat clamps down, and Yuri laughs out over the noise of the party. “Oh my god, is he a Munchkin?” 

“Yeah!” Kamilya responds while putting the beer on the counter. “That’s Stumpy. He loves Otabek the most.” 

“Feeling is less than mutual,” he huffs underneath his breath. He cat likes to pounce on his crotch whenever he’s minding his own business on Kami’s sofa. 

“So Otabek isn’t good with animals,” Yuri decides, looking up at Kami. 

“Not at all!” she responds. 

“Okay, cause we were at the park, and this dog ran up to us.” It’s strange to see Yuri open up to someone so quickly. He’s immediately tugged in two directions. There is of course relief, that these two strong and opposing personalities may be able to get along. There’s also apprehension and dread. Kami likes to talk when she drinks, and she knows too much. “It was a big one. Like a Doberman? He fucking hid behind me.” 

“Sounds about right.” 

“I have another one, Nibble. She’s probably hiding under my bed. Come on, I’ll show you.” Although Yuri is reluctant to do as much as run down to the convenience store without him, he gets up and follows Kami immediately to her room. 

Otabek runs his hands along the granite counter tops until he comes into contact with a dark green glas bottle of open red wine. He supposes there is nothing that can be done. The night will play out in whatever manner that it plays out. He pours the rest of the contents into a cup, and drifts toward the living room. Maybe he can find Kami’s girlfriend Vera. The scent of her clove cigarettes are always soothing. 

* * *

“I’m doing a show at Gan Bei,” Vera explains. 

“Ah, really?” Otabek responds dryly. He doesn’t much care for Gan Bei. The club is too loud, and electronic music on the whole leaves a lot to be desired. But he loves Vera’s instruments. The sampler that he has in his hand is pristine white, and round around the edges. When he runs his fingers over the surface, the buttons are smooth, clean, and unlike the well worn keys of the upright piano in mother’s office, the one with the groove in the center of the case and the nicotine stained keys. 

Conversely, although the device was undeniably expensive, it doesn’t feel like playing the grand piano in the music room. He doesn’t feel like one false move will break the device. He can jam his fingers against the keys absent mindedly as he speaks. He can drone on idly in half attention. With it, he has the freedom to make mistakes, and he can’t quite ever remember being able to feel that way when he was at mother’s piano. 

He likes the device very much. Maybe he should get one. 

“You could join me. They’re always looking for people. Especially on Tuesdays.” 

“Ah,” Otabek has also seen Vera’s show. Although she draws a decent crowd, it is decidedly not his scene. She puts on a strange production where she abandons her sampler leaving it on loop. Then, she dances about in long undulating waves before banging on a small toy piano. The whole performance is a strange mixture of surreal and bizarre that makes Otabek’ head hurt. “We usually do a night session on Tuesdays.” 

“Oh really?” Vera raises a single contoured brow at him. “Go on.” 

Otabek mashes several buttons interrupting the low of the melody he’d gotten started. “Yeah, Vera. Highly erotic. Axels. Salchows. Step sequences until our feet are bleeding. That kind of thing.” 

“He’s real cute,” Vera lights up a clove and plucks the sampler from him. “We need,” Vera exhales. Otabek takes a long draught from her glass of wine. “We need couple friends.” She taps at the sampler with one hand, and her long acrylic nails tap against the buttons on the instrument. 

Laughter erupts from the other side of the living room where several men are playing a drinking game at the coffee table. If nothing else, he must admire his friend’s optimism and enthusiasm. 

“Here,” Vera extracts another device seemingly from thin air. “Fuck with this one. It’s got more of a typical piano interface. Not just shit I’ve preprogrammed.” 

Otabek’s finds rhythm immediately with this device, although making something that meshes well with Vera’s disjointed clicking and clacking up and down her sampler is much harder and requires several glases of wine. 

At some point, Yuri emerges through the smoke and the throngs of people in the party with a less than pleased cat in his arms. “Otabek look what I found!” He sits on the corner of the sofa, and he brushes up against Otabek’s side. “What the fuck is that? It’s super cool.”

* * *

Flying spin, spread eagle, into the second quad. The sequence of events is simple enough, and yet his body will not cooperate. He’s spent the morning watching Yuri pop axels, and botch quads, and he’s convinced that he’s experienced some kind of emotional contagion as a result. 

It has everything to do with that, and absolutely nothing to do with the way that Yuri drove them home again last night after the party. It has nothing to do with the way that Yuri’s hair smelled like citrus. It has nothing to do with the way that he and Yuri sat folded up on the sofa at the party for hours, and hours, and hours and were completely unaffected by the emerging chaos of the party around them. They simply mashed buttons on the sampler, and talked of everything and nothing. 

It has nothing to do with the fact that he feels increasingly called to action. It is difficult to classify his contact with Yuri now as platonic. The way he held onto him at meddu, the way that he leaned on his shoulder past midnight and complained that he was tired.

The issue of course is that Yuri feels emotion constantly, but does not realize the full extent of them until far, far later. 

Otabek repeats the sequence again, gets in the right amount of rotations, but is shaky on the landing. This means that he ends up face down on the ice. He opens his eyes, and for a moment the bitter cold feeling of ice against his chest and his face is negated by the sight of Yuri staring at him intently in a near identical position, sprawled out onto the ice. 

Their eyes meet for a moment, and in that split second Otabek knows for certain. He knows for certain, and he’s going to act. 

Otabek rises, and Yuri does too. They act without speaking. They act while simultaneously knowing what the other seems to want.  “Otabek,” Yuri asks as he drifts across the ice. Yuri offers him his hand, and Otabek accepts. “Why are you fucking up.” 

“I don’t want to be boring,” he responds. He’s needed a new quad for some time now. However, hearing Yuri tell him this made it undeniable fact. 

Yuri’s face shifts to a look of slack jawed disbelief, as if he cannot believe that his words are so impactful. This is what he means when he believes that Yuri experiences many emotions, but does not understand their consequence until much later. “For the free skate yeah?” 

“Hm.” 

“What’s the music?” Yuri asks. 

Otabek isn’t sure how to respond, and so he goes with the simplest response. “An original piece. Not quite ready yet.” 

“Hm.” Yuri shrugs in contemplation. “Your form is good. I don’t get it.” 

“Neither do I,” which isn’t exactly the a lie. He’s had difficulty with programs when things weigh heavy on his heart in the past. When he had to tell his coach in the states that he was coming home, he couldn’t land a Sal for weeks. When he told mother he wasn’t applying for undergraduate studies just yet, he couldn’t sleep for days. “But same for your counters.” 

Yuri’s face pinches into a frown. Maybe something also weighs heavy on Yuri’s heat. “It’s just hard,” Yuri decides. “Fuck it. Let’s do something else.” He skates backwards, drifting away from Otabek. 

Otabek follows slowly. Yuri brings out hesitance and recklessness in him simultaneously, and he cannot say that he likes it. 

Yuri keeps speaking. “Something that isn’t an axel, or a Salchow, but something where I can just show those fucking counters,” he clenches his teeth around the words. “That they’re just turns.” 

Otabek finally closes the distance between them skating behind him in a wide elegant Choctaw. He touches Yuri’s hip lightly, and he notices the way that Yuri softens into the touch. Yuri extends his arm upward and rests it on Otabek’s shoulder. 

“This?” Yuri must be answering his call if he’s asking for this. Right? Over and over, and over again they’ve practiced a move that is superfluous to their routines. Each time they touch, and they become closer, and with each failed death spiral something deep and intimate is left in it’s wake. He’s certain. 

They skate in tandem for a few diagonals. Yui keeps his hand extended against his shoulder. Otabek touches the silken soft skin on the underside of Yuri’s arm. Otabek’s hand brushes against his hip holding him with just enough pressure. Yuri leans down, and leans back, and Otabek cannot detect an ounce of tension in his body. He’s lithe, and he’s malleable, and everything that he always is on ice, just doing so under Otabek’s touch. 

Yuri pulls against Otabek’s grip with every ounce of his body, but Otabek holds him firm. They spin round, and round, and round, and Otabek cannot believe that it’s finally happening. He’s certain. 

Otabek guides him back up. Their eyes lock, over Yuri’s shoulder and Otabek wets his lips with his tongue. Their dance is simple, primitive, certainly nothing worth scoring by the ISU’s standard, but it makes him feel so alive. Rocker, counter, rocker, til they’re facing each other, and they’re so close that Otabek can feel Yuri’s breath on his face. He’s got one hand on Yuri’s hip and the other splayed against his back. Their chests heave against one another. His whole body burns from exhaustion and excitement. He hasn’t felt this good on the ice since Pyeongchang. 

Otabek leans in close. He expects Yuri to do the same. Except, it never happens. Otabek leans in closer, and closer, and closer still, but yuri doesn’t close the scant millimeters between them. Paralyzed by fear, Yuri does not yet know if he wants to kiss him back or pull away in disgust, and to him it’s just as good as outright rejection. Yuri does not yet understand that his emotions have consequences, ends, conclusions. “Yuri,” Otabek breathes raggedly, “I’m going to land the Lutz” 

As quickly as the whole thing escalates, Otabek breaks it all off. He does a loop leaving Yuri in the middle of the rink. He can hear Yuri cursing at him in the distance, but he cannot hear what it is that he has to say. 

He lands the Lutz. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More direct repition of scenes here, and only a little bit of new content. Next chapter is kind of the same, but after that there's a bit more new stuff.

Otabek read once, “all men dream, but not equally.” When Otabek dreams of Yuri, it differs completely from his daydreams and waking fantasies. 

Otabek read once, “Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity.” In these dreams, he is the wild and unfettered man that Yuri believes him to be. 

Otabek read once, “the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” In these dreams he is the unafraid man that he hopes to one day be.

Otabek’s got a block up under the kickstand so that it sits straight on the cool pavement of the garage. Everything in the background seems to be coated in some kind of nondescript diamond plate or chrome. The lighting is harsh and omnipresent, such that he can see every little detail around them from the wrenches scattered about to Yuri’s discarded clothes which are wadded up and tossed to every nook and cranny of the room. 

Otabek has axel grease up his arms, and it gets smeared cross Yuri’s unblemished skin, and his fresh white shirt. Yuri isn’t annoyed. In the halo glow of his dream he wears it like a badge of honor. In this dream, Yuri raises a gloved hand to his mouth. Otabek peels it away with his teeth, and laps at Yuri’s fingers with the taste of leather on his tongue. 

Otabek’s jacket is tossed thoughtfully over the gas tank, so that the cap doesn’t dig into Yuri’s flesh, and Yuri is a vision bent over the bike with his hair spilling down his back. Their gaze is constantly locked onto one another as Yuri looks over his shoulder. 

In these moments, which are far more smooth than anything he’d see happen in real life, Yuri’s lips are kissed red and raw.  

His own actions are confident, and self-assured. Whenever Yuri’s confidence waivers, a swoon into a kiss or his cock nudging against his entrance, Otabek reassures him once again with his body. A trail of kisses down his neck, or a soft whisper into his ear, “Yura please.” 

Otabek threads his fingers into Yuri’s hair, tilts his head back into searing kiss and thrusts inside without meeting the slightest bit of resistance.

He’s given the clear and vivid image of looking down at the place where they are joined. Yuri’s bright white skin pops against the black leather seat, and the gloss of the fuel tank.  Otabek parts his cheeks with his fingers, and watches himself slide in and out.  Yuri twitches, and Yuri coos. Otabek himself lets out deep and guttural noises. Otabek tastes the sweat from the skin between his shoulder blades. In these dreams, his senses are on edge, and absolutely everything is amplified in the way that only fantasy can be, and yet he’s never able to quite discern how it feels when he’s buried deep inside of him. He’s filled with pride at the chance to take, and to claim, but his imagination never quite fills in the gaps on how it would be different from his hand. 

Yuri begs him in-between feverish open mouthed kisses for, “more Beka,” and he always, always meets up to rise him with a quick snap or sensual slow roll of his hips. “More. Beka please,” Yuri’s eyes are half lidded and dreamy. 

Otabek’s eyes flutter open at this exact moment. It’s when he always wakes up, as if his mind is unwilling to allow him to continue. Otabek works quickly, because it’s better to simply deal with what his mind’s eye has conjured rather than dwell about the specifics too much. 

However, it’s incredibly irksome that his mind gives him so much, and leaves him so woefully disappointed. 

Otabek shoves his hands down his pants and frees his cock. The feeling of cool air against skin in and of itself is a relief. How would he finish? On his back? Between his thighs? Or, would Yuri indulge him and allow him to finish inside of him? 

Otabek works his hand up and down his cock as he considers all of these options for a moment. He loves each and every one. He thinks about how it always slides in so easily in his dreams. Although this cannot be the case in real life, he thinks about this image often. 

Otabek gives himself a few more rapid strokes. Then, he presses a finger against his hole. He’s never… 

The action itself isn’t particularly pleasurable or memorable, but for whatever reason it makes him cum in thick powerful spurts onto his stomach almost immediately. His phone chimes, first in soft gradual notes, and then with a louder chime. He cannot reach for it right away. The shame he wears on his stomach, his chest, and his crotch weighs him down, and for a moment all he can do is lie on top of his comforter.  

* * *

 

“Ten millimeter,” Otabek requests as he stands over the engine with a scowl. It’s difficult to be truly angry with Yuri when he’s laying out in the grass in a wispy cotton shirt that looks like something out of a music video. Soft ruffled sleeves fold into a v-neck, and it reminds him of the kinds of things that girls would wear to music festivals. Of course Yuri adds his own flare by slapping studded bracelets over the sleeves. He pairs it with denim shorts that ride low on his body, and Otabek finds it difficult to tear his eyes away from the way that Yuri’s stomach flutters with each breath. He finds that when this image of Yuri combined with the sweltering summer heat are combined…Well, it’s stifling. “Ten millimeter please Yuri.”  

“Oh, shit fuck damn.” Yuri rakes his hand across the socket set until he selects one. 

“What’s wrong with it?” Yuri flops back onto the grass now that his assistance is no longer needed. 

Otabek is still uncertain how to move forward with Yuri. He assumes that Yuri will come to know his feelings in a furious surge of energy that will threaten to topple them both. Otabek considers himself a patient man, but their time is so limited. Every second that slips through his fingers, is another second that mounts onto the regret that he feels for not kissing Yuri the other day. 

“Got flooded last night,” Otabek speaks honestly. It’s one of the things that he loves about Yuri. He can handle it when someone is direct, forward even with him. 

“Yeah well someone,” Yuri stares daggers at him, and Otabek turns and locks eyes with him, “played a drinking game with a shitty hag, so I had to drive.” Funny, because he was joined at the hip with that hag for most of the evening. Although Kamilya tends to have that effect on others, irresistible yet disconcerting. 

However, there’s something about Otabek’s assessment that doesn’t sit right with him. Yuri can take openness, honesty, bluntness even. He supposes it comes along with being born and raised in Russia. So, why can’t he bring himself to be honest with Yuri? “Baptism by fire I guess,” Otabek says as he plucks a sparkplug off the engine block. The sound of the next plug being ratcheted loose fills the silence between them. As Otabek twist his wrists he wonders what he fears more: outright rejection or a rapid shift in the deep, meandering pining that he’s incorporated into almost every facet of his life.  

“These plugs needed to be replaced anyhow.”

If he cannot be direct with himself, how can he ever hope to be direct with Yuri? 

On the lawn there are anemic, sickly little clover flowers that blossom small and stay small due to the courtyard’s frequent mowing. Yuri threads the thin strands together, making a chain of them. It reminds him of playing with Farida when she was very small. 

“I need the fourteen millimeter again Yuri.” Yuri’s hand lazily drifts back to the tool box, plucks the socket, and hands it to Otabek.

“This too.” He slips the looped strands of clover loosely over Otabek’s wrist.

Otabek looks at it, then at him, and then back at the flower bracelet. For whatever reason, this makes his heart race more than Yuri’s arms wrapped around him on the bike. This is somehow more nerve-wracking than their near kiss at the rink. As there is no adrenaline or frustration to hide behind. Just two humans at an aggressive impasse. 

“You do it then,” he thrusts the socket into Yuri’s palm. He doesn’t remove the flowers.

“What, me? No way?” 

You might need to know how to do this, if you ever have a car or a bike or something.”

“I’ll pay for someone to fix it.”

“That’s wishful thinking,” Otabek replies. In reality, there is no lesson here to be taught. There’s just a limit to how much vulnerability can be wrung out of one person. Otabek is thoroughly at his limit, and eager for any kind of distraction he can muster. “You might not always be so fortunate.” Otabek snaps up Yuuri’s Diet Coke, discards the straw into the grass, and drains the can. He winces when he finishes. “Artificial sweetener,” he shudders.

“Get your fucking own then.”  Yuri accepts the ratchet with shaky hands. He walks on his knees across the grass toward the bike. 

“Sleeves,” Otabek reminds him. It would be a shame if the pretty pastel sleeves were stained by grease. 

“Right,” Yuri pushes up the flounced sleeves revealing cream colored forearms. 

Just put it on the plug,” he gestures to the spark plug on the engine. “And crank to the left. I’ve already got them loosened.”

“Hm.” The sound of the ratchet click-click-clicking the spark plug loose fills the silence once again. Otabek sits on the grass next to where Yuri kneels. His eyes settle upon the small swath of skin just between the waistband of his shorts and the hem of his shirt. He watches closely, as Yuri shifts his weight from one knee to the other. 

Otabek turns his gaze to one of the many alley cats that live behind the shed. Enyo creeps out, and he can only assume that her kittens will follow. When he first moved into this neighborhood, and he still felt like a stranger in his own city, the alley cats seemed to tolerate him more than any of Almaty’s inhabitants. So, despite her stench, her pinched mouth, lumpy body, and single eye, she will always be very near and very dear to him. 

“Blinky!” Yuri drops the wrench against the engine with a clank, and Otabek cringes at the sound out of instinct. It snaps him back into the present. 

“Blinky?” Otabek says with a half chuckle. “This is Enyo, the one eyed witch who shares a single eye and a single tooth between herself and her sisters.”

I call her Blinky. That’s like an actual and appropriate cat name.”

“She’s foul.” Otabek says as he rubs his fingers together gesturing for Blinky to come closer.

She doesn’t.

“It’s kind of endearing,” Otabek continues.

Yuri removes the rest of the old spark plugs before Otabek intervenes once more.

Otabek extends his hand towards Yuri gesturing for the socket wrench. The purple and white clovers dangle off his wrist limply.  “Okay, you’ve proven yourself. I’ll take back over.”

Yuri rakes his grease smeared hands down Otabek’s chest. It takes every ounce of self-control that Otabek has to not flinch and pull away in abject terror. Yuri’s hand is heavy, and he scratches lightly with his nails, and even when he pulls his hand away Otabek feels as if he’s been set on fire. 

“You’ve been feeding them?” Otabek asks after a long while. Long enough for Enyo’s kittens to deem it safe and venture out from behind the shed and into the courtyard. 

“Yeah,” Yuri gruffs. Now it’s Otabek’s turn to feel the intense icy blast of Yuri’s stare. It melts away the sweat and the summer sun, and makes his skin feel clammy and oversensitive. It seems as if every movement is put on display, and every action is scrutinized. He wonders if he passes whatever test that Yuri is giving him. “ Is that a problem?”

“No,” Otabek replies just a bit too quickly. “I often feel conflicted,” Otabek supplies after a moment. “On whether or not it’s the right thing to do.” Continuing on in this cyclical pattern: disclosure, intimacy, push away. It’s destructive, but addictive. It’s simple and it’s known. 

Otabek rises from the engine block slowly, and tries to kick start the engine a once, twice, a third time to no avail. On each attempt, makes loud popping noise like it wants to turn over, but the sound dies part of the way through, and in the end nothing happens. Otabek quickly returns to a kneeling position and fiddles with something above the engine.

“Be less cryptic, Otabek.”

In that taunt, Otabek has an answer to the question he’s been grappling with all afternoon. He drops one of the new plugs into the grass and swears under his breath. 

“If I feed them, they get healthier, which means the females can get pregnant more often, which means more stray cats in the alley. More that live past springtime and into the winter. Then those kittens grow, become pregnant…More strays. In the winter, even if I feed them there are only so many places they can go. The weaker ones…” His voice trails off. At this point, it’s cowardice that keeps him from speaking out. 

“Doing nothing seems less cruel to you?” 

“Not exactly,” Otabek puts the ratchet down and turns to Yuri. “What is the best way to care for something?” Otabek’s voice trails off.  “What if the best way to care for something isn’t what you perceive to be the best way? What if that person-” He furrows his brow in frustration. This is not how he envisioned this conversation going. “Wants to be cared for in an entirely different way? Or…what if…they don’t want to be cared for…at all?” The words feel like chalk in his mouth. It’s painful, and he’s effectively ruined the moment by burying it in metaphor. 

“Otabek,” Yuri blinks at him with wide eyes and a slack jaw. Otabek can feel him process everything that’s just been spoken between them, and in those scant seconds time slows down. Existing on this very plane with Yuri feels like agony. 

“I think Otabek,” he begins shakily. “If I keep putting out food for them,” one of the kittens has drifted his way and he almost gets a pat in. “And you keep, not putting food out for them,” he looks from Otabek to the kittens, to the grass and back again. He has no idea what they’re talking about anymore. “Then it all cancels out in the end right?”

“Hm,” Otabek agrees after a long while ““This is why I like plants.” “Ten millimeter?” Otabek never quite understood the meaning of self sabotage. Now, it’s heaviness, and its inevitability seems to be branded across his skin in the blazing summer sun. 

Otabek reassembles the rest of the bike, stands up slowly, and begins to work out all of the kinks from his body. He supposes that their bodies match their demeanors. He is rigid, and unwavering. Yuri bends. He’s not just waiting for Yuri. He’s waiting on himself just as much.

Otabek kick starts the engine, and this time it roars to life in full. The thunder of the engine clears his mind of the mounting negativity that’s taken root there. Everything is fine. He can do this. He can tell Yuri.  

“Ride?” Otabek asks simply. 

Yuri nods. 

“Let’s change our clothes then.”

* * *

 

Otabek will tell him tonight, of this he is certain. He’ll play Yuri the free skate piece. Then, they’ll walk about the garden. Otabek will take Yuri’s hand into his in the orchard. The trees are always in blossom this time of year. The air will smell sweet, and everything will be in bloom. Maybe he’ll weave flowers from mother's garden into some kind of arrangement, much like the simple clover chain he wears around his wrist. He’ll say nothing for a time, and they’ll simply exist with one another. Grow comfortable with the shift in contact between them. Then, Otabek will simply say, “Yuri, did you know that I love you?” 

Of course, nothing that is planned can ever be so seamlessly transposed onto real life. It’s always a bit rougher around the edges, and more raw. Sometimes, it falls apart entirely through no fault of your own. 

Yuri seems on edge in mother’s home, and he cannot particularly blame him. Although he grew up among these trappings and antiques, he never truly felt comfortable. These display items suggested that the space was for gazing and observation. If he lingered among them, he too could be gazed upon and observed. Otabek decided long ago that he’s alright with eyes upon him, so as he’s the one moving the lights and casting the shadows. 

Yuri’s anxiety seems to intensify when they get to the music room. The large floor to ceiling windows leading outside to the veranda, the harp, and the grand piano all come together to make something lacquered and macabre that looks more like one of the oil paintings in the foyer than it does real life. 

Otabek remedies this the only way he knows how. He locates the sheet music, and shuts the binder with a crisp snap. He sits at the piano bench, and motions for Yuri to sit next to him.  

“Otabek,” Yuri’s gravely as he tries to mask that he’s upset. He does that sometimes, becomes indignant when he learns something new that he never thought to ask before. He likes that about Yuri. He possesses a certain voraciousness that, despite his overall lack of effort cannot be considered lazy. “Mind explaining?” 

Otabek answers honestly, for he’s always found it much more simple to speak of his loved one’s accomplishments than it has been his own. “My mother was the best concert pianist in Kazakhstan. “Perhaps it is why Yuri’s victories don’t seem to ever sting as much as they could.”And among the best in France and Vienna and Germany and Switzerland.” He raises his hands to the keys, and begins to play. 

The soft and meandering chords are uncertain, and to the untrained ear, they are timid. Only those who know better, and Otabek admits that it’s a very limited number of discerning people, can understand that there is nothing timid in apprehension. Apprehension means caution. Apprehension indicates a wild and unstoppable force that should only be uncorked  _ if _ consequences are willing to be dealt with. 

In the piece, the chords grow stronger, faster, and more insistent. He’s never asked his mother how she was inspired by the piece, but it always reminded him of the time when they still lived in Paris. Before she was reunited with Yusef, and right after father passed away. She seemed to grow into her own as a person. She played concerts almost every single night in whatever city they were in. 

Otabek is not a man who considers doing anything half-heartedly. He pours his entire body into the piece, and he views it as nothing different than what he does on the ice. As he leans up and down the keys his knee brushes against Yuri’s. Their arms touch and knock together. Sometimes the touches and the bumps knock him off pace. Sometimes, his fingers mash together awkwardly due to lack of practice. The notes are uneven, but brutally earnest. 

There was something about being on the bench, next to Yuri that made his heart race despite the fact that they were often wedged much closer together on the sofa or on the bike. The room felt stuffy, and suddenly he could smell every antique carpet in the house, he could feel their fibers thick on his tongue as he played. He breathed in deeply through his nose and out slowly through his mouth desperate to control the emotion that flowed through him. 

Whenever he himself plays the piece, he thinks of it’s many possible iterations. Mother’s perspective, the people of Kazakhstan,  and the patriotism he’s gained after so long away. It’s not lost on him, how he’s adored by them in kind. Before, he’s always played through the song and thought of Yuri and Yuri alone. His grit, his passion, and the kindness that only few get to see leave much to be adored. Yet, it feels so wrong now that Yuri is here beside him, and he hasn’t done so much as say anything. Can anyone truly adore if they cannot be forthcoming? 

After the transition the tone is deeper, still relentless, almost sorrowful. They meander where the previous section was systematic. Then, in stark contrast it closes with a chord of softer, more delicate notes. Otabek doesn’t retract from where he rests on the bench, leaned into Yuri’s space. Yuri seems to lean back into him in kind. Now is the time. 

“I envy skaters like you and Katsuki,” he says after a long pause. “Or Viktor….or even Christopher Giacometti and Georgi Popovich. You have an ability to skate your emotions freely.” And Yuri seems to express feelings without fear. He may divert them, misplace them, or misrepresent them, but he still expresses without cowardice or fear of judgement. 

“It’s not effortless,” Yuri fires back. “I struggle with it all the time. Do you think I really give a shit on how to convey, my shitty theme? Unyielding? Things that don’t yield: mountains, bridges, dams…People usually,” he waves his hands about, “yield.”

Otabek rakes his hands down his slacks and dampens his mouth with his palms. Then, he turns to Yuri and smiles earnestly. “That of all things should be easy for you.” 

“Well,” Yuri responds with a huff. “What kind of shitty feeling has you feeling shitty?”

Otabek shoots him a look through half lidded eyes. Yuri’s hair is falling out of a messy windswept braid. Despite Otabek telling him they were visiting his parents, he’s wearing a t-shirt that he wore around the house yesterday. He smells like herbs from the kitchen. 

“The name of the piece is,  _ For Those I Adore”,  _ and ah-“ It’s perhaps far worse than he imagined it being in his head. “I-ah _.”  _

Yuri cocks his head and stares at him. Their legs are still touching, and Otabek becomes acutely aware of it in that moment. 

Then, perhaps in his saving grace or perhaps to his own demise, he can hear the sound of the door clattering open, and the thunk of clumsy feet against carpet. Farida’s voice interrupts him, and he screws his eyes shut in sudden and volatile avoidance of the situation at hand. 

“Beka!” Otabek turns to her. Her long orange dress spills across the carpet and makes her look like a demon sprung forth from the vermilion threads of the carpet.

* * *

 

Mother has told them that they’re having a wonderful dinner that night. Poached salmon and other things. However, it doesn’t stop him and Yuri picking large apples, dates, and pears from the trees and sitting upon the grass with bare feet and eating them voraciously. It makes Otabek feel like a child about to spoil his dinner with candy. 

Perhaps this has more to do with their company than it has to do with any lack of control around sweet fruits picked fresh from lush green trees. 

“Perhaps you need a bath,” Otabek suggests when Farida bits into a too ripe pear and spills juice down the front of her dress. 

“No way,” she insists. “Tell me more about Korea. Beka’s stories are all boring.” 

Yuri rolls his eyes and looks at him, as if he should be able to remedy this issue through older brother vote. He’s known that Yuri is an only child for some time now. However, it becomes abundantly clear in that moment. 

“It really wasn’t that great haglet,” Yuri sighs. “Every fuckin morning, five thirty in the morning before my fucking coaches even wanted me up, he’d wanna go for a run. Your brother is a weirdo.” Yuri fists his fingers into the grass and pulls at the finely manicured lawn. 

“He said that he saw you eating kimchi with your bare hands.” 

Otabek drops the pear he’d been munching on. He can feel Yuri’s icy stare upon him. It’s aggressive if not deadly in it’s weight and intensity. 

“Oh,” Yuri drawls. His mouth curls into a sharp smile that indicates many dangerous things: a flooded bike engine, or a death spiral, or a call to action that he cannot answer, but will rise to anyway because it is Yuri that is asking. “He told you that did he?” 

‘Yeah!” Farida pops a fat date into her mouth and chews rapidly. Yuri does the same in kind, and for a moment he forgets that he’s in trouble, and can only concentrate on the fact that they’re more alike than they are different. Crass, endearing, and sources of constant anxiety. 

“Otabek cried when we went to the fish market.” 

“I didn’t-“

“He so fuckin did,” Yuri snorts and takes a large bite of a crisp apple. His lips smack together. 

“He is weird about stuff like that,” Farida agrees. “He freaked out when you said you were coming to visit. He asked mom to buy him a sofa because he didn’t have one.” 

Otabek nearly chokes on the morsel of food in his mouth. He coughs, and he coughs until his chest rattles and he can feel his face grow red hot.  

For the time being, Otabek seems to be unable to get a moment alone with Yuri and so the natural conversational bridge that had built between them in the music room has gone. In it’s place, is something that is wholly different but equally intimate. 

“Farida wrote you fan letters,” Otabek speaks when his sister and Yuri stop giggling rolling about on the grass at his expense. 

Immediately she freezes, and shakes the stray blades of grass from her dress. She gets up from the ground, and into his space. From her standing position, she towers over him. “Did not.” 

“Did,” Otabek responds simply. 

“Did not!” 

“You signed them Farida Pl-“ That’s the last he can get out before she’s tackling him to the ground and jamming a knee into his stomach.

 


	5. Chapter 5

It’s the fifth day of July today, meaning he has less than a month, 27 days really, to think of something to get for Farida for her birthday. It’s the fifth day of July, meaning they both have less than three months, 84 days really, until the first Grand Prix events begin. 

Otabek rises promptly when his alarm chimes. He selects his clothes without thinking of it much. Sun streams in through the window onto the taupe carpet, and the reflections play against shadows and on Otabek’s skin as he moves about the room. Brushing his teeth, selecting clothes for the day, the motions are deeply ingrained in muscle memory, to the point of being automatic.  His favorite charcoal track pants, and a purple colored shirt that he purchased in Prague simply because Yuri told him he’d never seen him in anything other than neutral tones.

Otabek rinses his mouth at the sink, washes his face, and dries it with a fluffy white towel courtesy of his mother. Thanks to Farida, Yuri may know about the sofa. What he doesn’t know is that she also bought him a set of fluffy white towels. Before Yuri came to visit, the ones he owned had been carted about since before he went to the states. Never needing new ones, and frequently leaving them at hostels, and hotels, and places where he wouldn’t be for very long, Otabek only owned a few. 

Otabek sits at his desk chair, and reaches for his shoes. In the privacy of his room, he doesn’t mask the groan that slips from his mouth. Everything feels impossibly stiff from his back, to his hips, to the taut muscle between his shoulders. When he’s bent at the waist seated in the chair and face to face with an ocean of short berber carpet, the featherlight athletic shoes feel as if they’re made of lead. 

When these aches and pains first crept into his joints and his muscle, he didn’t understand. Every minute and every second of his life was revolved around the maintenance and control of his body. So, he pushed himself. He kept to his routines, even if the pain kept him from practicing for as long or as hard as needed. He did everything he was supposed to do, a model patient from a sports medicine textbook…. 

So the question remained, why wouldn’t his body yield? 

Otabek rights himself, and rubs the muscle at the base of his spine. Then, he walks back across the room to the bathroom. He takes his cup which rests on the sink counter, pours water into it, and walks back across his room to the windowsill. Here he waters the small plants that he keeps on the ledge. A Christmas cactus he purchased at the market, and a small fern which Kamilya bought for him as a housewarming gift. 

“Good day?” He asks the Christmas cactus. “Or not so good day?” Otabek reaches for a dried stalk at the base, and pulls It away from the plant. With it snaps free a crisp green leaf, the air is filled with the scent of chlorophyll. 

Otabek walks down the hallway towards the kitchenette, his feet shuffle across the carpet softly. Here his movements are again guided by automation and muscle memory. He shoves a white parachute like coffee filter into the pot, and then pours directly from the can of pre ground coffee into the top of the machine. 

Otabek rocks on his heels as he waits for the coffee to brew. He reaches for the single mug in the cabinet, and readies the cream and sugar. He checks all of his plants to see if they need water, and then he searches the cabinets for something to eat. There’s cereal, and protein shakes, fruit, and a whole carton of eggs in the refrigerator. However, nothing sounds appealing. As Otabek closes the cabinet he realizes, perhaps not for the first time that impatience is not a state of being which he wears particularly well. 

The coffee pot gurgles, and Otabek abandons his search deciding that he will let Yuri decide. Perhaps in his helplessness Yuri will make him a soft-boiled egg. Otabek pours himself a cup of coffee, and no sooner than he feels the warm ceramic touch his palm, he can hear the door to Yuri’s room open with a clack. 

Otabek does not reach for the milk or the sugar. 

Yuri’s usual morning trudge down the hallway sounds like a defeated shuffle. For the first time all summer, Yuri arrives before him fully clothed. He’s wearing an oversized navy sweat shirt that droops down his arms and falls down far below his waistline. He’s wearing sweatpants that appear to be pulled up well past his belly button. 

Otabek rocks up on the balls of his feet slightly, and then lowers himself back down quickly. Although Otabek cannot be exactly sure what’s brought this out in Yuri. However, he knows that Yuri feels emotion constantly. He also knows that his friend does not realize or understand the full extent of them until far, far later. 

At times it is enviable, the way that Yuri can act, and do, and speak without becoming trapped in a net of intricate minutiae. 

Now is not one of those times. Now, he sees Yuri in agony. For he has let this grow between them for so long without processing much of anything at all. 

Otabek moves to offer Yuri the cup of coffee in his hands. He opens his mouth to tell Yuri that there is neither cream nor sugar in his coffee. They can talk after Yuri’s had a few mouthfuls of coffee and had the chance to shake the sleep from his mind. 

Instead, Yuri brushes past him. Otabek can feel the invisible black static that bristles between them. 

Yuri grabs a juice glass, pours coffee into it, and then nearly drops the glass wearing, “fuck, fuck fuck.” Then, he slams the juice glass onto the table. 

Otabek winces at the sound of glass against granite countertop. It grows silent between them for a long time, until he decides to break the silence between them.  “Central Mosque today? It’s a little further, but it’s time to start serious endurance training…Not to mention it’s-,” a good place to talk things out. The surrounding park is beautiful, quiet, and the likelihood of interruption is minimal. On the long run Yuri can process, and Yuri can get the anger out of his system, so that when the anger dissolves there aren’t tears of regret left in his wake. God knows he’s spent many a night offering Yuri a handkerchief after he’s chewed out and spit at Victor Nikiforov and Yuuri Katsuki. The anger always, always, melts away into something else less volatile and more genuine, but it always takes an immense toll on Yuri and his heart. Otabek can see this in him. 

 “I’m not going this morning.” Yuri goes through the rest of the motions of his own morning routine. He shoves a few fistfuls of dry cereal into his mouth, and drinks milk directly from the carton. However, his movements are flustered and disjointed, as if he is desperately trying to avoid any kind of contact with Otabek. He disappears into his room, emerges fully dressed, and then stomps out the door. 

Alone once again in the kitchen, Otabek can hear the jingle of keys from the other side of the door. 

Otabek has known fear before. He tipped the bike when he was alone on a trip to Astana, and it nearly fell on top of him. Otabek moved to a foreign country alone when he was fifteen, and knew for a fact that English had always been his worst subject in school. Otabek has known fear before, but never like this.  Helplessness melts into regret. His distorted way of dancing around Yuri’s feelings emerges fully for as what it is, cowardice and an aggressive inability to treat his friend as human and not like fragile glass. 

The very worst part is that he still has no idea how to take the pattern he’s woven for months, if not years at this point, smash it, and exist human to human with Yuri. 

* * *

Otabek knows that the gash in Yuri’s hand isn’t fatal. Otabek is pretty sure that in his senior year advanced anatomy and physiology class he read that the average human body contains something like five liters of blood. And, he’s pretty sure, fairly sure, that a few small, blotted locker towels cannot hold that much blood. Yet, the very sight makes his knees buckle. Knowing that this was Yuri he was watching bleed  _ so _ much, makes sour bitter bile rise to the back of his throat. 

Lilia tells him to get more towels, and by some miracle he does. The bare blades of his skates clack against the tile floor of the locker room, and he almost slips and falls when he turns around to run back out to where they stand on the ice. Otabek knows that the gash in Yuri’s hand isn’t fatal, but when it comes to matters of flesh, bone, blood, muscle and sinew, he cannot bear to address them. 

He can remember when his father’s condition was at it’s very worst. Everything on his body hurt, and the source was a large open wound on his stomach.  _ Metastasis  _ was the word that they used. What he saw before the visiting nurses could shoo him away was gaping purple black skin that heaved with each labored breath. 

For the longest time, he saw this image when he closed his eyes. He saw this image when he was staring out of the window of the stuffy classroom he spent his days in. He saw this image when he looked down at his feet on the ice in skates. Now, it’s abated ever so slightly...He doesn’t so vividly see it so much as he feels it whenever he sees suffering, whenever he sees flesh, and whenever he sees bone. 

Otabek allows Yuri to hold onto his arm and dig his fingernails into his skin. Otabek maintains eye contact with Yuri through the whole thing until the paramedics arrive, even when his eyes narrow and tears form in the corners of his eyes. He owes Yuri that much, because Yuri is strong in ways that he cannot be. 

* * *

As always, Yuri impetuous and brash, does it for him. “Come here,” Yuri’s voice sounds the way he looks, pale, rough, tired. Yuri’s face is flushed as he sits on the kitchen counter. He’s still wearing more clothes than he typically does when he’s at home. Sweats, and shirt that hangs loosely across his frame. His chest is exposed, and Otabek can see the peak of his collar bones and the valley in between. Yuri’s tongue parts his lips, and he spreads his legs wide and invitingly, begging him to stand between. If standing outside the examining room and waiting for Yuri to emerge with stitches felt like a hundred years ago, then seeing the ice covered in crimson red felt like five hundred years ago, and seeing Yuri stand before him fully clothed at breakfast felt like a thousand.  

Perhaps for Yuri it doesn’t feel like so long. For he is almost certain that Yuri has cycled through the peaks and the valleys of what has taken Otabek a long time to process in the course of a single day. Yuri grows impatient now, and has summoned him.

Otabek feels as if  he’s floating or gliding upon the ice. The movements are natural, and flow freely. If not but for a moment the constant war he rages with his iron will and his own body is masked completeley. 

“So, get this.” Yuri’s crossed his arms over his chest, effectively blocking access to his body. Yet, Yuri called him closer. Called attention to that strange, beautiful thing that clung between them like the silk of a skating costume to skin.

Otabek settles between Yuri’s still open legs. Boldly, and unapologetically, he rests a hand on Yuri’s hip. The other on his knee. He brushes against the fabric of Yuri’s pants. Otabek watches in sheer fascination as Yuri cycles through a wide array of reactions. Yuri’s eyes narrow at the contact. His eyes narrow at the contact. His cocky grin fades and is replaced by something between want and fear. His jaw goes slack. Yuri rubs his non bandaged hand across his thigh, and then licks his lips.

Otabek leans in closer, he can feel Yuri’s breath against his skin. Yuri opens his mouth to speak, and so Otabek listens to him. 

“Today, after practice…After Lila and Anton left and we were all alone, I’d planned to tell you that I liked you.”

For a moment, it feels as if the wind has been knocked out of him. He’s spent so much time agonizing over the best time, or the optimal time. He never expected the transition from friends, to something more than friends would be so natural or so smooth. It seems far more perfect than a pristine moment or a grandiose gesture. They fit together so well, and it’s a relief to believe that it may be so for things like this as well. 

“Is that so?” He has to actively bite back laughter, because he knows that Yuri would misinterpret it. It’s just humorous really, what Yuri can do in a day versus what he cannot do in a matter of weeks. 

“Yeah. It was gonna be pretty romantic. Like in one of your girlie books, but not like TOO over the top. I was gonna ask you to skate with me. Have you do the death spiral with me…then kiss you and see how it went.” 

“What’ll you do instead?” Now, he keeps spurning Yuri on out of pure cruelty. He’s waited so long, let Yuri do the same. Surely the seconds between now and when their mouths inevitably come crashing together will feel like centuries to Yuri. 

“Tell you I like you in the kitchen, in between bitching and moaning about how I cut my hand to ribbons.” 

He uncrosses his arms and drapes them over Otabek’s shoulders, pulling him closer so that he’s leaning over the counter into Yuri’s chest. Otabek melts into the touch. His hand travels from Yuri’s knee to his jawline. He tilts his mouth slightly.

Yuri’s injured hand fights to hold him. Their lips meet, and it feels too fast. Otabek wants to remember every minute detail of the moment. He wants more than the memory of Yuri’s pajamas, the smooth feeling of the counter beneath his palm, and the thundering tick of the kitchen clock. He wants more than the scent of hot oil bubbling in the pan, and better words to describe Yuri other than hard and warm. 

He wants to remember the rise and fall of their chests. He wants the feeling of Yuri breathing into the kiss branded into his memory, because there cannot be anything better. 

Yuri barely lets him come up for air, and for that Otabek is grateful. They drag each other back into the kiss as quickly and as fervently as they began. He wants to drown in Yuri, and be consumed by Yuri. He wants the feeling of Yuri’s soft lips pressed against his always. He wants the weight of Yuri’s body pressed against his own a constant burden upon him. More than anything, he wants to revel in the sheer fact that has been granted permission to love Yuri.

* * *

Otabek and Yuri sit down at the coffee table. Yuri takes  a few wolfish bites of food before transferring his fork into his injured hand, and linking it with his own. Then, Yuri’s voracious movements slow down, and then stop entirely. The fork clinks against glass, and so Otabek stops eating too. “Problem Plisetsky?” They’re holding hands and seated at the low glass coffee table. Yuri’s bandaged hand rests upon the glass table top, inches away from his own fork. His bowl of stir fry sits untouched on the table, and he knows that Yuri is hungry. 

Otabek lifts their hands from the glass. A small stamp of moisture is imprinted upon the glass. He twists their joined wrists and kisses the soft pad of flesh on the side of Yuri’s palm just below his pinky. “We can do this later,” his mouth twists into a grin. He loosens his grip. Conversely, Yuri’s grasp on his own hand tightens. 

“This really fucking pisses me off you know? Of all the days for something shitty like this to happen,” and it's as good as Yuri saying that he’d rather not stop holding hands. 

“I am sorry that it happened to you.” Otabek leans into Yuri’s space. The kiss lands awkwardly over the top of Yuri’s hair halfway between the shell of his ear and the lobe. Otabek does his very best to pry his fingers from Yuri’s. 

Yuri snorts audibly, snaps up his fork, and begins to shovel food into his mouth once more. “I’m always doing dumb shit when I have stuff on my mind. You know what I mean?” 

“Yeah,” Otabek responds. “Although, I think maybe for me it’s the opposite. I don’t do much of anything when I have something on my mind. That’s never good.” 

“Is that why it took so fucking long?” Yuri asks. The fork scrapes against his bowl as he rapidly finishes off his portion of food. Otabek knows that if his other hand were working properly, he would’ve already opted to hold it closer to his mouth and simply shovel food in. For now, Yuri simply chases bits of mushroom and summer squash around and around the edge of the bowl. “I was doing dumb shit, and you weren’t doing fucking anything?”

“Maybe,” Otabek finds it difficult to care now that his own leg is rested up against Yuri’s underneath the coffee table with little fear of negative consequence. “Didn’t think you’d be so reflective.” 

“I’m not fucking stupid,” Yuri snorts. 

They finish the rest of the food. Otabek stands up slowly, and rubs his back at the base of his spine. Then, he extends his hands and helps Yuri stand too. Yuri hovers nearby as he does the dishes, so closely that he bumps into him several times simply turning to reach for the pot and pan which still rest on the stove burners. 

“Doesn’t it piss you off that we wasted so much time?” This time, it’s Yuri that steals a kiss. He wraps an arm around his waist, and presses their lips together. Their noses bump lightly, and they part with a smack. “Like, I guess I always knew that I liked you. But then it hit me. Like, fuck I l _ ike you _ like you.” 

Otabek’s hands are still wet and soapy when he pulls them from the water, grabs Yuri in response, and kisses him back. He deepens the kiss almost instantly, tracing the line of Yuri’s lips with his tongue. Yuri lets him in, and pushes back. Each kiss shared between them seems to simultaneously embolden them to go further, and quietly retreat. Each action is coupled with assessment and repetition. “I knew I liked you for a long time.” 

“How long?” 

“Would it be off putting if I told you I had some inclination when I watched you skate in Barcelona?” 

Yuri scoffs, and immediately follows up with a sloppy, open mouthed kiss.  “I mean it pisses me off,” Yuri says when he pulls back from the kiss. “You’re always figuring shit out before me.” 

“I don’t mind,” Otabek responds simply. “Maybe it works out.” 

Yuri sticks out his tongue in mock disgust. 

With the dishes finished, they both linger in the foyer, not wanting to go to separate rooms but too tired from the day’s events to linger in the livingroom. “We could watch a movie in my room?” 

“I think I watched this at least a hundred times growing up. My grandpa had it on VHS.” Yuri says as he opens the film in media player. His hands drag across the trackpad adjusting the volume. 

“I think I’m only at twenty,” Otabek confesses. “I saw it once or twice growing up. Then, when I lived in the states there was this independent film house showing it in Ann Arbor in Russian. I hadn’t heard spoken Russian in so long. I downloaded it and watched it every week.” 

“It’s weird how stuff gets better when you’re lonely. Like, when I first came to Japan I felt so fuckin lonely. I listened to the same three albums like, constantly for days and days on end.” 

Otabek nods. On the bed, things have been reset once again. Yuri is inches away from him, and it won’t do. It’s strange, how life continues without a tangible, hitch between them, but all the little details seem to be knocked off center and need constant recalibration. 

“Let’s um,” Otabek purses his lips. He shifts on the bed, leaning back. 

“You wanna cuddle Altin?” Yuri doesn’t wait for a response. He does one better and peels back the comforter and wriggles down in between the sheets. 

“Yes,” He responds simply. Otabek does the same crawling behind Yuri and spooning him. Then, he wraps his arm across the front of Yuri’s chest.

“Don’t you think this is like,” Yuri wriggles against him and turns to him so that they’re facing. He interrupts himself to press his mouth over Otabek’s. “Weird?” Otabek’s mouth pulls into a frown and immediately Yuri launches into over sharp over compensation. “Like okay don’t freak out! I mean, good to be true?” He asks.

Otabek cups the side of his face and kisses him again. This he can agree with wholeheartedly.

“Like just yesterday I was freaking out because I realized how into you I was.” 

“Only yesterday Yura? I’m wounded.” But his actions betray his words. He runs his hand down Yuri’s side. He plays with the hem of his shirt, and touches the bare skin at the small of his back. He dusts playful kisses down Yuri’s neck and his collar bones. Yuri gasps in response, and he swears that the sound alone feels like a featherlight touch against his cock. 

“Okay but like I knew I wanted to kiss you in the rink the other day.”  

“Well…” Otabek props himself up on his elbow, and stares into Yuri’s eyes. In them, he sees something that no other person has seen before. He sees a Yuri without conditions. A Yuri without anger. A Yuri who does not struggle to articulate, because there is nothing explain. In the textured ridges of his green blue eyes he sees everything. “Let’s make up for it then.” 


	6. Chapter 6

Otabek feels soft, butterfly kisses against his mouth and his cheekbones, but he does not will himself awake immediately. Such a thing must surely be a dream. Although it’s only been a few days since he and Yuri confessed to one another, he does not lack confidence so much as to believe that all of  _ that _ was a dream. He knows that Yuri is here beside him tangled up in the blankets with him, and that is his reality now. 

No, he simply believes that this must be a dream, because of the very nature of the kisses. Soft, barely there whispers of skin against skin is not how Yuri Plisetsky kisses. It’s hot, and it’s demanding, and it doesn’t matter if they’re in the privacy of the apartment, or Yuri’s pushing him into the locker room. 

Yet, the soft press of lips against his don’t go away. They maintain at a constant pace, slow, almost cautious even. Then, Otabek feels something else pressed against his thigh with a white hot need. Otabek’s eyes snap open with realization that reality is often  much better than dreams themselves. 

Otabek’s face is pressed so close to Yuri’s that he can feel their breaths intermingle. Yuri’s eyes are half lidded, and glassy, as if he too, is still trying to discern whether or not this is all just a dream. 

Yuri blinks at him once. Twice. Then his eyes go wide, as he tries to decide in a split second if this moment is one that he should be ashamed of or not. Otabek wraps his arms around Yuri in silent response.  Then, he presses his mouth to Yuri’s. He does not change the pace or divert their kisses away from the slow and sleepy pattern they’d fallen into. However, Otabek does demand more of Yuri. He presses his tongue against Yuri’s lower lip. Of course, Yuri allows him to deepen it.

Yuri works a hand up underneath his shirt. Otabek sneaks a hand down his underwear cupping his ass. They press their cocks against one another, and they move against each other without so much as a word. Each roll of the hips or thrust against one another’s clothed length makes Otabek wonder if they should press forward. It would take a split second to pull their underwear down, and let their cocks touch skin to skin. Yet the mere idea of parting, if even for but a moment sounds grueling. It makes it seem as if the precarious, unfettered want between them would shatter. 

He wouldn’t risk it for the world. It feels so incredibly good, knowing that Yuri wants just as badly as he does. Yuri’s leg is thrown over his torso, smashing them together. Yuri holds on with a vice like grip. Each roll of their hips makes Otabek feel Yuri’s length against his own, and it sends addictive electric bolts down his spine. 

The kisses shared between them become frantic open mouthed presses of tongue against tongue with long sticky trails of saliva in between.  Otabek nudges Yuri off of his neck, only to latch onto Yuri’s earlobe. Then, Yuri repeats the process all over again when he nudges Otabek out of the way once more and grazes his teeth down his neck line.

The bed creaks with their urgency, and the pitchy sound of their breaths rise up over the constant steady creaking of the bed frame. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears. He can feel his whole body tense up, much like when he’s going into a jump, except the raw impact of landing on the ice doesn’t come. It builds, and it builds, and it builds to an unimaginable pleasure.through half lidded eyes that he has to force to keep open, he can see that Yuri is in a similar state, his hair pushed into his face. He bites against his lower lip and struggles to keep his eyes open. 

Then, just as quickly as it all began, it’s finished. Otabek’s whole body shudders, and with it, the tension is released. Yuri’s name is on his tongue and it feels as if his whole body is pulsing. Best of all, the cold, shameful feeling he’s used to feeling is wholly absent perhaps because there’s someone else who needs tending to immediately. 

Yuri frantically continues to move his body against Otabek, and in that moment Otabek is willed to action. He pushes Yuri onto his back, and jams his hands down his pants. Yuri’s cock is warm, hard, and wet. It only takes moments for him to cum into his hand in a fury of, “fuck-Beka-shit-fuck-damn.” 

Otabek gets them both tissues. While changing his underwear his fingertips snag against the nylon blend fabric, and it sends shivers down his spine. The letters on his alarm clock read 5:10 AM, and the faint light that streams into the room makes everything look gray and melancholy save for Yuri, his jewel toned eyes, and his half turned smile. “Still better than my fucking hand for sure,” Yuri murmurs his eyes drifting shut slowly and then rapidly flying open. 

Otabek slides back into bed beside him. “Yeah,” Otabek agrees simply. There’s a fine line between expectation and anticipation. Yuri’s method, although disjointed and impersonal ripped every ounce of expectation out of it, and made this natural between them too despite the fact that it was all so new.  “I agree,” Otabek kisses the crown of his head. “Much better,” So much so that he could easily do it again. However, he finds his answer in Yuri’s lack of enthusiasm. “Should we wake up, or sleep more?” 

“Go make me breakfast,” Yuri grunts. “Something good. Not just fuckin rice cakes and peanut butter.”

* * *

 

“Yuri!” Farida’s got her skirt hiked up high as she stomps in between the fountains. Her long black hair is soaked through and pressed to her forehead. Otabek is supposed to take her to her art lesson after this, but he doesn’t see that happening now. She darted for the fountains as soon as they were within eyesight, never mind the fact that he did little to stop her. 

“C’mon it’s fun!” She kicks up water in his direction, and although he’s sitting far, far away Otabek watches his mouth pull into a sneer. 

“Back off haglet,” Yuri rests up underneath tree on a bench in order to prevent burning. His constant scrolling through an endless stream of Twitter or Instagram is interrupted only to scowl at Farida when he’s unimpressed, and to switch apps when one becomes boring.  “I’m not wading around in filthy water with all those other people.”  Of course he says this while he hides his stitches in his hand from view. 

Otabek can remember being stuffed into an over starched uniform every morning before going to school. He can remember rink time early, early in the mornings a few days a week. He can remember a Latin tutor, and a French tutor after school. Then homework, and then more rink time. He can remember falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He can remember finishing his homework and course readings in the passenger seat of mother’s BMW on the way to school. 

He does not feel a shred of anger, discomfort, or loss about the way that mother chose to bring him up. However, he feels as if there is so much he has yet to do. Certainly, he’s traveled to many places and few can say that that at nineteen they’ve lived on four continents and more countries than he can count. However, what is it that he’s really seen? He’s done more in the city this summer than he feels like he’s done in his entire life. Yuri on the other hand…

Yuri has climbed mountains in Japan, and swam in its oceans. He’s lived in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In Korea, Yuri had to all but drag Otabek out of the dorms to see the sights. 

If he could choose a path for Farida...He knows that he cannot, but if he could, he’d want her to live a life more like Yuri’s. 

“What about you then Beka?” More water splashed in their direction, but missing him completely. Otabek turns to her. From the shaded spot near Yuri, the fountains are bathed in the blinding white light of the midday sun. “C’mon!” She calls after him. 

Otabek supposes it’s no good to pick her up, bring her into the city, and then spend the entire time at Yuri’s side. “Just a minute,” he pulls his wallet from the back of his pocket and hands it to Yuri along with his phone. “Would you get us some bubble tea or something from the cafe?” He gestures to the shop across the street. “She’d like that.” He adds quickly, “you’d like that. Get out of the sun. We’ll meet you over there.” 

Yuri grabs for his wallet and phone. “Fifteen minutes.” 

Otabek turns to walk toward the fountain, but Yuri’s hand catches his shirtsleeve. Yuri pulls him down and their lips meet for a fraction of a second before Yuri pulls back. 

“Right,” Otabek agrees.

* * *

 

Otabek has never, never been more thankful for bad poetry. He’s never been more thankful for the green gray glow of the lights that shine upon the Zodiac fountains at night. He’s never been more thankful for Yuri’s fleeting and impulsive nature. As foolish as it may seem, he’s never realized just how nicely it meshes with his own demeanor which goes from indecisive to sharp precision after careful deliberation. 

“Beka,” His name falls heavy from Yuri’s mouth. The sound shoots from the tips of his toes. Two syllables, his name, should never sound so obscene.   
  
Yuri’s hair is still damp, frizzy, and uncombed. A faint rose colored blush paints his cheeks. From just above the hemline of the faded t-shirt he wears, Otabek can tell that he wears the same pattern across his collarbone. A smaller, deeper red mark adorns the place where his neck meets his shoulder.   
  
Yuri’s got the hairbrush in his hand, but the husky tone of his voice and the fiery precision of his gaze suggest more.   
  
“Do you want to?” The other man straddles him without preamble, and sets the hairbrush on the armrest of the couch.   
  
With the weight of Yuri’s body on top of him, every drop of apprehension he might have had evaporates in the hot fire above him. Somehow the feeling of Yuri, wet, hot, and trapped in damp denim is made to seem trivial by the feeling of Yuri, warm and pressed against him in sweats. 

“Yes,” Otabek’s hands fly upward to cup Yuri’s ass. Otabek’s first inclination is to be greedy. Yuri wants this just as much as he does, and he feels as if in this moment, he could easily have free reign of Yuri’s body. He could rub himself between his thighs. He could ask Yuri to use his mouth. 

The mere thought makes him squeeze Yuri’s round supple cheeks between his hands, and pull down at the waistband of his leggings. Every fantasy he’s ever had could become a reality, and he’s desperate to get  _ more _ any way that he can. 

This is the time when expectation meets anticipation. Although Yuri looks at him with confidence, he knows that they are both driven forward by both. He knows that although expectation may be  _ more _ dangerous, anticipation is not a state to be trusted either. For all it could take is one wonderful, delicious, horrific movement of Yuri’s body and he fears that they’d both spill without so much as touching one another. 

“Yes,” Otabek responds. “If you want to.” Slow it down. Take a breath. Expect soft lips hungrily lapping at his own demanding more. Anticipate that whatever he and Yuri are willing to give to one another will be good. 

Yuri rolls his hips against Otabek’s. Otabek rises to meet him in return. Yuri sucks in breath sharply, exhales slowly, and rides out the wave of pleasure before speaking, “Flowers,” he speaks of the blossoming rosemary plant in the center of the room. 

Otabek slots his lips over Yuri’s and Yuri immediately melts into the kiss. He rolls his hips once again, and simultaneously digs his fingertips into the firm flesh of Yuri’s ass. Yuri moans into his mouth, and his worst fear almost becomes a reality as he feels the warm electric drag of Yuri’s cock against his own. Yuri nibbles on his lower lip in a way that is both sinful and playful.  

“Candles,” this time it’s Yuri that presses his lips against Otabek’s. The world is rested upon his chest, and the universe smells of rosemary and vanilla scented candles.  Yuri catches his upper lip with his lower. The mismatched kiss is paired with another roll of their hips, and through these combined actions any awkwardness is eliminated by slow building mutual need. “So fuckin’ romantic,” Yuri laughs. “Of course I want to.” They join one another again at the mouth, and this time the kiss is frantic, as if Yuri is trying to reiterate his point without using any more words than he has to. “I hope you do to.” 

Otabek responds in the language that Yuri speaks fluently with his body. He traces the line of Yuri’s lips, and when Yuri parts them for him, he presses against the tip of his tongue. When he pulls back Yuri chases him. When he presses back, he does so with the pure and unbridled want that he’s so desperately wanted to show Yuri for so long. He threads his fingers into Yuri’s hair, tugs at it lightly, and tilts his head back making the kiss go deeper still. 

Yuri whines, and grinds against him furtively. There’s no comparing it to anything else because there is nothing that can hold a candle to Yuri. Yuri is sensual without intending to be through shirts that show his collar bones, and shorts that show his long dancer’s legs, and whispering him things on the back of the bike when they’re pressed close. When it’s intentional, it’s a force that threatens to be all consuming, because Otabek is the kind of man who is drawn like a moth to a flame to things that he wants. 

Otabek allows one of his hands to leave Yuri’s bottom. His free hand migrates upward and he begins to play with the hem of Yuri’s t-shirt. His fingers skim lightly against the exposed skin there. They finally part with an obscene sounding smack of their lips. Otabek speaks, “I want to do everything with you.” 

“I had no idea,” Yuri punctuates the statement by rolling his hips against Otabek again. “Where should we start?” 

“We’ll go slow. Save something for the next day.” Yuri relaxes against him, seeming to find comfort in those words. He’s noticed that about Yuri. Yuri isn’t so much insistent that things be done a certain way, nor does he want things to always be hard, fast, and right now. Instead, there are times when he simply seeks permission to slow down. There are times when he wants someone to walk with him slowly. 

Their mouths meet again. Gone is the tender slowness laced with uncertainty of before. It’s nothing but hot, damp unbridled need. Their hands match the tempo of their mouths. Yuri’s got his hands up under Otabek’s shirt pushing it up to his armpits. Although Yuri has seen him in various states of undress before, he isn’t prepared for Yuri’s unapologetic wide eyed stare, no matter how badly he’s hungered for it. 

Otabek allows his hands to roam across Yuri’s body. The divot between his shoulder blades and the smooth of his back is a place that he’d very much like to kiss on his body. His fingers trace each slightly raised nodule of his spine, and rest on the crest of his tailbone but for a moment before sliding up his sides and brushing his fingers against his ribs. 

Yuri sinks his teeth into the juncture of Otabek’s neck, desperate to repay the small bruise that Otabek left on Yuri’s skin at the fountain. “Yura,” his voice barely sounds like his own, husky and needy. 

He trails his hands back down again to Yuri’s backside. This  _ must _ be his favorite place on Yuri’s body. 

“You really like doing that, huh?” Yuri says when he’s finally satisfied with the marks he’s left on Otabek’s neck. Although they cannot be that large or that dark, Otabek can feel his neck pulse even in the absence of Yuri’s touch, and he likes that feeling very much. 

“You won’t let me take off your shirt.”   
  
“Huh-“ Yuri’s eyes go wide, “Oh! Yours too.”

Otabek obeys, pulling his shirt up by the back of the collar. It goes up over his arms, and then he locks eyes with Yuri again. They stand stock still, as if bound by two invisible and opposing threads pulled tight on either end of the room, they stand trapped, so close but so far away. 

Then, as if on cue, god himself cuts the string, and they crash back together. Lips, hands, tongues, and skin, they indulge in one another’s bodies completely. 

Perhaps Otabek was hasty in saying that Yuri’s ass was his favorite part of his body. He catches a pale pink nipple in his mouth, and grazes his teeth against it until the flesh pebbles underneath his tongue. Otabek pulls back to watch the pale pink skin darken red, and then he does it all over again. He watches Yuri screw his eyes shut tight, and he watches them fly open no sooner than he dare break contact. 

Otabek only stops so that he can shift back up Yuri’s body, and taste the soft moans on Yuri’s lips. There are more rolls of the hips. He’s unsure where Yuri’s motions end and his begin, but he knows for certain that he’s so tight in his underwear. He knows for certain that he wants this so badly.  He knows for certain that he and Yuri have gone back and forth for so long, that action no longer feels as good as it did. Each drag is almost painful. The friction is too much, and yet his body demands more. “Yuri please,” Otabek pants in-between sloppy and open mouthed kisses. 

Yuri pulls down his pants and drinks in the sight of his body as he works the pants down his hips. “Yuri,” Otabek repeats, eager to do the same. In a movement that’s far more coordinated than their attempt at taking off their shirts, Yuri gives Otabek just enough space to cant his hips upward. Yuri tears the pants down.   
  
Once completely bare, they look at one another again.  Otabek is certain that if he took a moment, took a breath, took a fraction of a second to come back to reality he’d feel an almost oppressive tension in the room. There’s none of that as he and Yuri greedily look at one another. Yuri’s cock is uncut. A small bead of precum dribbles from the slit and down the tip. It makes his mouth water. 

Otabek knows that his own cock stands at sharp attention. Otabek knows that Yuri looks at it with the same hunger and intensity that he eyes the rest of his body. 

Otabek cannot stand a second longer without him. Otabek flips their positions fully so that Yuri is seated on the cushions, and Otabek is kneeling, tugging his pants the rest of the way down.  Then he’s back on the couch with Yuri, and Yuri is crawling on top. 

The hot damp feeling that melted their clothes to their skin at the fountain returns at full force, but now it feels as if he’s melting into Yuri. Beaded with sweat, their foreheads slip and slide against one another. Their thighs glide against each other similarly. 

Their cocks touch, and they thrust against each other experimentally. 

“Yuri,” Otabek bites his lip. Otabek watches the head of Yuri’s cock pull against foreskin as they thrust against one another. Otabek clamps a hand around them both, and he loves the way that it looks. The only thing that makes it better is the sight of Yuri’s hand joining his own on top. The tips of their cocks dissapear and reappear in their hands, and Otabek becomes lost in the delicious drag of it all. 

Yuri splays his free hand wide across his chest, and there is nothing more important in the world in that moment than the pressure on his cock and the pressure on his chest, and the feeling of Yuri’s knees digging into his thighs. 

That isn’t to say anticipation yields completely to expectation. He’s used to his own touch, and so is Yuri. 

“Can you...A little harder?” Otabek pants. 

“Yeah.” Yuri adjusts his grip. “Slow down,” Yuri orders. “Or I’m gonna,” Otabek immediately slows the movements of his hands. 

“Otabek,”   
  
“Yuri,”   
  
“Otabek,”

The scent of candles and rosemary is overpowered by the scent of their intermingling sweat. The only sounds between them, other than their names on each others’ tongues is the brush and the slap of skin against skin. 

Otabek doesn’t last long, but neither does Yuri. Yuri’s grip is firm, and he twists his hand in the most infuriating and most addictive kind of way. Otabek tightens his grip on Yuri’s cock, and then Yuri’s cumming into his hand. Otabek isn’t far behind.

* * *

 

“You like it?” Yuri’s mouth is spread into a wide grin, perfect white teeth and the hint of pale pink gums. Yuri pulls the rest of the newspaper, hastily taped to the package away from the box. 

Otabek wonders what the occasion is, because as far as he knows there is no occasion. It’s Saturday. They went running, and then Yuri made them a nice breakfast, which is quickly becoming Saturday tradition. Then they went to the rink, and now they reconvene at home for a few brief quiet moments before the second Saturday tradition comes into effect: playfully squabbling over where to order takeout. 

There is a blush dusted across Yuri’s cheek bones, and that alone suggests that although there is no  _ occasion.  _ Instead, Yuri has made it as such. Saturdays are for eating, and movies, and now apparently gift giving. 

Otabek turns the box over in his hand. He reads the label, “Thirty-six programmable keys,“ and “three octaves,” but it doesn’t quite register. “Of course I like it….but Yura, you didn’t need to do this.” 

Yuri scoffs. “Okay, but you’re my boyfriend now. I don’t  _ need _ to, but I totally can.” 

Otabek fumbles to open the box, which is covered in more transparent packing tape in addition to the typical anti-theft measures which come along with buying new electronics. Yuri grabs for the box, and jabs at the tape with his slightly longer fingernails. He rips the package open abruptly, and then pushes the AC adapter into the keyboard, then he bends at the waist to plug it into the nearby outlet. “Plus you don’t even have a keyboard here. If you wanted to play something, you’d have to go all the way out to your mom’s house.”

Otabek wanted to explain that was a part of the process and the experience. Playing music reminded him of home and of family. However, Yuri hands the sampler back to him. His hands mash against the keys, and the crisp, albeit artificial tones and it sends a shiver down his spine. “Thank you Yura.” His fingers walk up and down the keys reciting simple chords. After a moment, he pauses and continues the conversation, “It’s nice.” 

Yuri tosses the packaging out, and Otabek wordlessly drifts to the sofa where he begins reading the instruction booklet and tapping out chords in-between. Yuri returns to the sofa also, and snuggles up next to him despite the warmth of the room. He balances his math textbook across his knees, and crinkles his brow at the text in frustration. 

“Not bothering you?” Otabek asks. Except, his hands do not move from the keys. The glide isn’t as smooth as mother’s piano. His fingers catch, and the keys stick but this is hardly a disruption. These nuances in the instrument will yield to different creations, and different processes. By its very nature will force him to step outside of his comfort zone, and make him create something new instead of simply relying on the same old pieces he’s played constantly since he was a boy. Yuri is good at bringing that out in him. For that, he is incredibly grateful. 

“Nah, I need some noise to make me think.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Otabek waits near the steps of the university library, because he knows that Yuri comes here with his tutor almost every day. He’s never actually been inside the building himself, but he knows that it has large glass skylights in the ceiling.  He knows that there’s a bronze statue of the university’s founding president on the main floor, and he knows that the sandwiches from the cafe inside are “garbage.” Of course, he knows all of this because of Yuri.  

Normally, Otabek and Yuri would converge at the rink from opposing sides of the city. Yuri would take the bus to the rink from here, while Otabek would take the bike from whatever errand he’d been running. Now, things are different. They’re together, and so, they arrive together. They leave together too. 

Today he watches a singular figure tear down the steps at a breakneck speed, and as he watches the dot in his vision shift from a blurred black spot, to a flash of color, to the unmistakable sight of Yuri’s long lanky limbs barreling down the steps. “Beka!” 

Otabek doesn’t even hear his name on Yuri’s mouth so much as he sees Yuri’s state of distress, and  _ knows _ just like that. He throws his weight on the bike and kickstarts the engine. Then, he throws the kickstand up. 

When Yuri runs, he looks like he’s rolling his ankle with every step, his gait is that of a person who cannot find their place within their own body, and it would be funny if he knew what the source of his terror was. 

Yuri jumps down the last few steps, and all but headbutts him on the bike. Otabek steadies himself, and the bike while Yuri climbs onto the back. 

Yuri didn’t need to yell, “step on it!” But he did anyway. Otabek has them moving down the tight university streets and back onto the main road in no time. He bypasses the main thoroughfare, and winds in and out of close side streets instead. The roads which lead through student housing are rough. Potholes dot the neglected streets, and students meander in and out of the road and the sidewalk as if there isn’t any traffic at all. 

Otabek drives them all the way to the rink, and only then does he ask, “What’s wrong?”

Yuri climbs off of the bike, and Otabek does the same. Yuri hooks his index finger into his belt loop and flashes him the most devious of grins. “Beka, do you wanna know what’s worse than a Yuri Angel?”

Otabek purses his lips together in thought. He’s parked on the top level of the carpark. He can see the heat radiating off of the top of the building, and he can feel it latch onto his skin in large hot chunks. 

“I’ll fucking tell you,” Yuri furrows his brows and puffs out his chest. “A fucking goddamn “Otababe.” That’s what. Or even worse, a fucking pack of those hags.” 

Otabek can feel his face flush with embarrassment. Kami had of course sent him a link to the trending tags when they were in Korea. He was  _ well _ aware. However, he his fans were different than Yuri’s. They didn’t chase him down alleyways, and ever since he stopped appearing in interviews and in magazines the attention by and large dissipated.  Which of course begged the question, “how are they worse?” 

“Okay so, I offhandedly your name when that hag Asia was around. You know smalltalk bullshit.” Yuri’s voice goes into a false high pitched tone. “How was your weekend?” Then he goes back to his normal speaking voice, “pretty cool, me and Otabek went out to the Chinese market and made eels.” Yuri licks his lips. “So then the hag just fucking loses it, “oh my god that’s your friend that you’re staying with? You never said he was a skater.” His false high pitched voice returns. “You never said he was Otabek Altin. That’s who it is right?” 

Otabek watches Yuri’s face grow red in compliment to his angular, ugly frown. Yuri’s jealousy is apparent. The fact that he’d never admit it, endearing. Otabek runs his hands across the waistline of Yuri’s jeans in response. His hands touch the crest of his hipbones over his shirt, and then he works his hand underneath. Just like Yuri would never admit that he is jealous, he’d never admit that he likes it when Yuri becomes protective of him. 

“She wouldn’t shut up, so a bunch of other hags at the library heard her hag whistle. They perked up, dropped their books, and kept asking me all these stupid questions. Like what kind of aftershave you wore.” 

“What kind of aftershave Yuri?” Otabek laughs and presses a kiss to Yuri’s temple. 

“Fuckin Molton,” Yuri spits at him through a half grin half scowl. “That’s not the fucking point,” he growls before pressing his lips to Otabek’s. “You know I don’t fucking like that. When people act like they know me when they don’t.” Another kiss, a bit more tongue than they should before they go onto the ice for the next few hours. “I don’t like it when they do that to you even more so. You’re fucking mine.” 

* * *

It’s quiet today. Yuri’s supposed to be writing an essay, and Otabek is supposed to be going through a folder of possible endorsement deals that Anton sent him, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot force his eyes to stay on the page. Instead he finds comfort in the thick mildewed pages of a novel, and pretends that his skill and his medals are enough to carry him through the rest of his career. 

It’s Yuri that breaks this silence with an elongated, pronounced, “Oh-my fu-uckin god.” 

Otabek looks up from over the hard backed binding of his own novel, and looks at Yuri. His mouth is slack and his cheeks are tinged red. His index finger is planted in the middle of the page, but he’s looking right at him. 

“They’re fucking blowing each other in this book Otabek.” 

“Ah,” Otabek smiles at Yuri, and cranes his neck to see what it is that he’s reading. He thinks that he can see between his fingers, the letters which spell out,  _ The Thin Red Line _ on the book resting in his hand. Otabek can remember the first time he read something that made him  _ feel _ that almost indescribable warm and dangerous sensation just below his navel. 

He’d been sitting on the steps of the Colorado Springs public library with a copy of  _ The Front Runner _ . He can remember reading it in the young adult room until his host mother text him and told him she was on her way. So, with sweaty hands he checked out the book and prayed that it wasn’t written on his face what he’d just read in the first forty or so pages. 

It’s surprising...endearing really. Because of course he himself had seen such scenes in television, and movies...His host parents had HBO after all. However, there was something about the written word that made him feel something beyond a physiological response. It made him feel like it was something that he wanted. Not the sensation of someone with him, but closeness, and intimacy. Perhaps it did a disservice to Yuri to think that he wouldn’t have a similar reaction.  After all Yuri is always surprising him. Yuri is always growing, and always surpassing. 

“You want to do that?”  Otabek snaps his own book shut. He’s seated on the floor, and so he climbs up onto the sofa, and all but crawls into Yuri’s lap. “Give each other blowjobs?” 

Yuri presses his lips to Otabek’s briefly. Chastely. “Uhm,” Yuri lets the book rest across his chest.  Otabek finds it odd that Yuri shields his body from him with his hands. The part of his skin that he can see is blushed red. Timidness is never Yuri’s strong suit, for it emerges only when he wants something with an unbridled passion, but does not know how to ask for it. “Blow jobs,” he bites his lower lip. “Are kind of weird for me.” 

“How so?” Otabek kisses him back, slowly, tentatively so that Yuri can stop at any time. 

Yuri kisses him back, and when they part with a smack. “People did it in the locker room back home. Like everyone. So I saw a lot of people I didn’t particularly like doing things that I never thought I’d want to do.”

Otabek nods, uncertain of how to proceed. He and Yuri are so close to one another. Although they were just kissing moments ago, but the air now is decidedly thick with a tangible tension. 

“You ever see anything weird?” Yuri asks.   

“Ah,” Otabek had to admit that the bulk of the “weird,” he experienced was outside of the confines of the locker room, but much like Yuri it was confined to the rink. The rink was the universe after all. “The zamboni driver and the girl that took tickets for public skate,” he supplies simply. “In the back office, bent over the desk.” He’d gone to the back door of the front office to get his skates from the sharpening station. Needless to say, he skated with dull skates that day. “We were on our way to Astana. In the back of Kami’s mom’s car. She brought this big purple yarn blanket, and we rode with this girl in singles, and you know they were giggling a lot..” 

Yuri sticks his tongue out in disgust as he speaks. 

“One time at Skate America I got really hard. No reason,” he supplies. “Dancer’s belt didn’t fit right. Went and started asking JJ about his endorsements, and his music, and his routine until I got soft.” 

At that, Yuri breaks his gag, but only to laugh at him. 

“So some things,” Otabek supplies simply.  

“I want to though,” Yuri says with a dark husky voice that sends shivers down Otabek’s spine “So let’s do it.”

That’s all that Otabek needs to hear. He leans forward again, and brushes his lips against Yuri’s softly. He waits for Yuri to deepen the kiss.   Yuri doesn’t bite his lip, he doesn’t slip his tongue inside. He moans into the kiss, and his tense body relaxes underneath Otabek’s touch. Yuri puts his arms around Otabek’s neck and laces his fingers together at the back of his undercut. He loves the feeling of Yuri’s short clipped nails against his close shorn hair. It starts the spark of a shiver at his shoulder blade, shoots across his shoulders and then goes down his spine. 

When they part, little more than a thin strand of saliva connects them, but it stitches them together and forces their mouths back together once more. Yuri presses an open mouthed kiss to his lips demanding entry right away. The kiss is all tongue, wet, and overwhelming in the way that only Yuri knows how to bombard his senses.

Otabek is desperate to do something, anything, so that he will not be a passive participant while Yuri blazes forward. Otabek leans up and away from Yuri to peel away his own shirt.  Yuri grabs the discarded book off of chest and puts it on the night stand. Otabek leans in and presses his mouth to Yuri’s lips briefly. Then, he tugs at the hem of Yuri’s shirt. 

Once Yuri is shirtless, he kisses Yuri’s neck, his collarbones, down his fluttering stomach until he’s settled between Yuri’s legs kneeling on the floor.    
  


“Otabek, the fuck?” Yuri’s voice becomes the muddled growl whine that he’s grown to love in these moments. “I was gonna do that. You can’t just-” 

Otabek can, and Otabek does. He undoes the button on Yuri’s jeans and tugs at the zipper. Yuri shifts up off of the sofa, and then helps Otabek push them down around his ankles. It’s important that he do this for Yuri. It’s important that he banish whatever negative thoughts that Yuri had about this. It was up to him to make it their own. His lips graze against the length of Yuri’s cock down to the tip of Yuri’s cock. He wants to go forward, but every possible next step is wiped clean from his mind. “You’ll get your chance Yura.”

“You’re a fucking bastard Altin,” Yuri says through gritted teeth. 

Otabek laps at his tongue experimentally, tasting Yuri upon his lips. Then, he opens his mouth again, and takes the tip of Yuri’s cock into his mouth. 

“Fuck,” Yuri rises up off the sofa, and thrusts his cock further into his mouth. Otabek grabs his hips, and pushes him back down in order to prevent from gagging. The strange push-pull that they do on the ice, and in everyday life is transferred immediately to these kinds of situations. Otabek finds it nothing less than comforting. Otabek finds that it removes every last bit of hesitance that he has even though he has no idea what he is doing. 

Otabek purses his lips around Yuri’s cock, and bobs up and down on it holding Yuri’s hips down at first to keep him thrusting too hard and too fast. Then, he closes a tight fist around the base of Yuri’s cock. He tries to move his hand in time with his mouth, but it doesn’t work out. The movements of his mouth and his hand are sloppy and disjointed, but Yuri doesn’t seem to mind. 

“Ah-Beka.” Yuri’s fists tighten in his hair and tug at him, but Otabek doesn’t move away from his cock. “Be-ka, fuck,” and he continues to spew a litany of curses that only Otabek can see for the praise that they really are. “Gonna-Beka.” 

Otabek hears the words, but he doesn’t change what he’s doing. His lips slide and smack against Yuri’s skin, and then, Yuri’s twitching in his mouth, and with a soft squeak-crack of his voice, “Beka. I’m fucking telling you!” Instead of feeling Yuri pulsing in his mouth, and tasting his cum, Yuri’s pulling back, and all but crawling up the back of the sofa. 

“Lemme do you now,” quickly, Yuri reverses his position, and goes forward tackling him to the floor and tugging at his pants. “Asshole,” he punctuates the sentence with a jab for good measure. Yuri pops the button on his pants, and drags them down Otabek’s legs before he has the chance to help Yuri shuck them off. 

Otabek props himself up on the carpet with his elbows. He can feel the friction of the fibers against his skin, but the sting is nothing in comparison to the sight of Yuri opening his mouth, and taking him between his lips.

“You didn’t let me finish,” Otabek breathes.

Yuri stops in the middle of gasping for air. His face is pulled tight in sharp inhale, and his mouth is so close to his cock he can feel Yuri’s warm damp breath against the head. He holds his breath with his mouth slightly parted and rolls his eyes at Otabek. “I didn’t let  _ you _ finish?”  Without any further warning, Yuri takes as much of him into his mouth as he can at once, and Otabek can feel his throat constrict around his length. Yuri pulls off of him as quickly as he went down on him and comes up with a gag. “You’re really fucking big Beka, shit.” But this actualization doesn’t stop Yuri from doing the exact same thing once again. He bobs back down on his cock, and Otabek lets out a long low groan in response. 

Yuri pops off of his cock with a smack. “Shit.” 

“Yura,” he breathes. 

For a moment, all they can do is stare at one another. Yuri hovers over his cock. Otabek sees an opportunity, and so he takes it. He pulls Yuri up for a kiss. Then, he’s diving back between Yuri’s legs. He barely gets his mouth on Yuri’s cock before Yuri’s kneeing him in the stomach, and pressing him down onto the carpet, “no you fuckin' don’t Beka.” 

So, Otabek resigns himself for the time being. He supports his weight on one elbow, and wraps his other hand around the base of his cock. “Slow down Yura. It’s okay,” he’ll want whatever Yuri is willing to give. 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” but Yuri has no choice but to obey. He swallows Otabek down once again, until his lips are pressed against Otabek’s closed fist. When Otabek did this for Yuri, they were never quite able to build up a rhythm. Now, it’s the opposite. Otabek pumps himself in slow shallow thrusts. Yuri bobs on his cock, in time with his own movements. Yuri’s mouth clenches around him with each thrust, making the perfect little O around him. His tongue laps across his head, and it’s much softer than the vice grip of Yuri’s hands or his thighs.  Even so, without the friction and the drag, it’s just as satisfying. 

Yuri makes strange throaty noises as he moves his mouth, and those noises intermingle with the slow and torn from deep within moans that spill from his throat, across his tongue, through his teeth and out of his mouth. He lasts even less time than Yuri did, and he doesn’t even have the sense to tell Yuri that he’s close. 

He simply grabs himself harder at the base, and tries to pull away. This doesn’t work, because Yuri drags him closer to his mouth with two firm and demanding hands upon his hips. In the shuffle and the struggle, Otabek’s cock breaks contact with Yuri’s mouth just in time, and then he’s fighting to get back between Yuri’s legs. 

“Oh come the fuck on Beka,” Yuri huffs. 

“What if we um,” Otabek purses his lips and tries to speak, instead of simply pushing Yuri’s pale skin into tan carpet once again. “At once?”

Yuri’s frustrated scowl melts into the kind of upturned grin that always ends in the very best kind of trouble. “I saw that in porn too,” he smirks. 

“I-” Otabek stammers. 

Yuri laughs, “It’s Oh-fucking-kay,”  and he pushes his hair back behind his ears. “There’s a difference between blowing someone in the locker room, and watching other people do it online,” his tone is nonchalant, as if they’re trying to put together a shopping list. 

They don’t say anything else. Otabek taps on Yuri’s thigh. Yuri makes a small, disgruntled scoffing noise, but turns around nonetheless and straddles Otabek’s face. He can feel Yuri’s wet lips close around the tip of his cock. Otabek mouths at Yuri’s cock, but finds it difficult to get him into his mouth while Yuri wriggles and writhes. It’s near impossible to get Yuri into his mouth while he feels hyper-fixated on the delicious feeling of Yuri wrapped around his cock. 

“Kind of weird, huh?”  Yuri pulls off. 

“Hm,” Otabek responds simply. If he cranes his neck just so and pulls Yuri’s hips downward, just right, he can get him into his mouth. This time, it’s Otabek that has to be mindful, take it slow, and do his best to not gag on his cock. 

Yuri pops off and onto his cock with loud smacking noises. Otabek isn’t sure if what he’s doing even feels good to Yuri. If his actions before were sloppy and disjointed, they must be doubly so now. His only reassurance is the occasional moan from Yuri. 

Their positioning is less than ideal and born of their own mutual stubornness, yet Yuri seems to be able to work wonders with his hand and his mouth. Otabek cannot contain the noises that spill from his throat and make his mouth buzz around Yuri’s cock. 

It certainly helps that they were both close when they abruptly switched positions. Otabek can feel the intense feeling of pleasurable inevitability return. This time he welcomes it. This time, he  _ thinks _ that he tries to warn Yuri, a muffled “Yura,” that comes off as a garbled syllable around his boyfriend’s cock. Still, Yuri persists.

Simultaneously, Yuri taps against his hip. Otabek can hear a muffled noise that might be his name, but they’re both too far gone to care. Yuri pulses against his tongue, and then there’s cum on his tongue, and his lips, and dribbling down his mouth. The taste is musky, acrid even. 

Yuri’s hand tightens around his cock, but the warm velvet feeling that had encircled his cock is gone.  Then,  he’s spilling all over Yuri’s mouth, upper lip and nose. Although he cannot see this happen, he knows it does, because he can hear Yuri  curse in dissatisfaction. 

Yuri’s hand leaves his cock. He rolls off of him onto the carpet, with the warmth and the weight of Yuri gone, there’s nothing left but the cold and omnipresent feeling of mortification. 

“I tried to fuckin tell you!” Yuri insists when he’s spitting into a discarded sock. 

“I don’t mind,” Otabek says simply. Few things are perfect, but Yuri is close. He’s willing to endure a moment of bitterness for more of the soft subtle glimpses he gets of Yuri. Moments such as right now, when he’s wiping sticky white cum off of his face. “I’m sorry I came on your face.” 

Yuri parts his lips with his raspberry pink tongue. “It’s real gross,” he says with a grin.” He continues,  “fuckin don’t be,” Yuri all but snorts. “It’s gross, but it’s fine.”  Yuri wipes his face clean with Otabek’s shirt and tosses it back at him. “You should see your fucking face right now. You look like you’re gonna pop another boner.”

* * *

They drag their clothes back onto rug burned skin, and try to ignore the sensation. Otabek assumes that his efforts must have been acceptable to Yuri, because Yuri sits in the corner of the sofa, and cradles Otabek’s head in his lap. Yuri runs his fingers along the edges of his closely shorn hair, and Otabek can feel his eyes drift shut immediately. 

The sofa cushions cradle his body, and he doesn’t feel sore anywhere. Such feelings are so very rare. He can smell the scent of detergent. His clothes smell the same way, because they take them to the same cleaner. He can feel the warmth of Yuri’s skin, because Yuri doesn’t pull his jeans back on, but instead finds a pair of soft velvety leggings. 

This is what true happiness must be. All the bad things are muted, and all the good aren’t exaggerated. They simply exist as they are for his enjoyment. His eyes slip open for a second, as he feels Yuri tap at his phone screen, which rests on the arm of the sofa. 

He can see the bright purple cord of his headphones from the corner of his eye as it loops around his chest to where it is plugged into Yuri’s phone. 

Yuri’s voice is barely a whisper as if he assumes that Otabek is asleep. Yuri’s voice barely registers in a mixture of half whisper, half voice, and half empty lip mouthing, as if he is not meant to hear this at all. 

As such, the timbre of Yuri’s voice is impossibly soft, “Here, someone is coming down the hill,” he recognizes the tune, from songs sang in childhood and seen in television commercials. They were lyrics from memory, never learned but always in the deep recesses of the mind. Yuri continues, “ Perhaps, it is my beloved coming.” Yuri interrupts himself with a soft chuckle. “He is wearing a leather jacket,” here Yuri changes the lyric, and Otabek is certain that he is dreaming. “And it drives me crazy.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled and saw that there's a Russian folksong w/lyrics that roughly translate to: 
> 
> Here, someone is coming down the hill,  
> Perhaps, it is my beloved coming.  
> He is wearing khaki service shirt,  
> And it drives me crazy.
> 
> So i use for feelz


End file.
